lOMPLETTON 
 
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 !■]•■• Chi'Ksi: ill i'' i 
 
 luciiou :iihI 
 
 mcnt. 
 
 Til. 
 
 and 111 
 
 RESERVED 
 
 hff, by Mr I nj 
 
;/ 
 
 /lO 
 
 J'.lOilli 
 
THE 
 
 SOCIAL HISTOET 
 
 or 
 
 ^ THE PEOPLE OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES 
 
 OP 
 
 EISTGLA^D 
 
 IN PAST CENTURIES; 
 
 ILLUSTRATED IN REGARD TO 
 
 THEIR HABITS, MUNICIPAL BYE-LAWS, CIVIL PROGRESS, ETC., 
 
 FROM THE RESEARCHES OF 
 
 GEOEGE ROBEETS, 
 
 AUTHOR OP 
 
 'THE HISTORY OF LYME RESM," " LIFE OF THE DUKE OF MONMODTH," 
 "DICTIONARY OK GEOLOGY," ETC. ETC. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, LONGMANS, & ROBERTS. 
 
 1856. 
 
 The right of translation is resevved. 
 
London : 
 Printed by Spottiswoode & Co., 
 New-street* Square. 
 
TO 
 
 THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 
 
 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, 
 
 &c. &c. 
 
 INTENDED TO IMPEOVE OXJR ACQUAINTANCE TVITH THE 
 
 SOCIAL HISTOKY 
 
 OP OUE COUNTET, IN WHICH FIELD HE HAS OBTAINED DISTINCTION; 
 
 TO PEOTE SUGOESTIVp IN MANY WATS IN DETEEMINING WHETHEK THESE AKE 
 
 OE HOT MANY INESTIMABLR ADTANTAGES ENJOYED BY THE 
 
 MODEENS OTEE THEIR AKCESTOKS, 
 
 IS, WITH SENTIMENTS OP QEATITIJDB AND RESPECT, 
 
 DEDICATED 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027939101 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The rare opportunity afforded me of access to archives 
 abounding with new materials for local and general his- 
 tory has furnished employment for the leisure of past 
 years. 
 
 Researches commenced in this new field disclosed many 
 particulars of the former condition of our countrymen, the 
 strictness of our borough magistrates, and the general 
 state of provincial civilisation. 
 
 These have been made available for the express correc- 
 tion of a very general ignorance of our Social History 
 that prevails. 
 
 That great historian Thucydides remarked the existence 
 of the same in Greece ; and explains this general weak- 
 ness of mankind, arising from their receiving alike, with- 
 out examination, from each other, the reports of past 
 events, even though they may have happened in their own 
 country. And he cites some remarkable examples of 
 incorrect notions possessed by his countrymen, even of 
 affairs of their own time. The same historian concludes 
 with a remark found to be true in every age : — " With so 
 little pains is the investigation of truth pursued by most 
 men, that they rather turn to views already formed." 
 
 How many whose attainments in several branches of 
 knowledge are considerable, are totally misinformed about 
 
 A 3 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 the past. Let us not judge that we have no more con- 
 cern with this, except as it may furnish us with subjects 
 of momentary interest to beguile a weary hour. No one 
 can meet the present or counsel for the future without 
 turning an attentive retrospect into the former condition 
 and events of his country. The novelist and other wri- 
 ters have created an ideal past, a fanciful conventionality 
 which totally misleads. The object of these pages is to 
 convey a faithful portraiture of bye-gone years, the condi- 
 tion of our countrymen, their manners, and state of 
 progress. 
 
 While authenticating our former social condition, the 
 insignificance of our boasted navy and shipping, and of our 
 army, will appear in the clearest light. Our true great- 
 ness in the present day then becomes manifest. In another 
 chapter the insecurity of our coasts, owing to pirates, 
 displays a remarkable state of things quite opposed to the 
 opinion of our having always been masters of the seas. 
 
 The ignorant of every age and country have shown 
 great unwillingness to admit, and determination, carried 
 even to the use of violence, to oppose novel means by 
 which improvement was to be effected. New plans and 
 manners of doing things have been judged to be wicked. 
 Developments which were matured into what has been 
 now proved to be the greatest of the benefits civilisation 
 has ever conferred, will be found to have been received, 
 not with inquiry, but with clamour and desecration. Pota- 
 toes, our most valuable esculent, were branded by some 
 as tending to produce leprosy ; and mobs connected that 
 root with a form of religion, and cried, "No potatoes, no 
 popery." Coaches were to cause the ceasing the breeding 
 of hackneys. Spending time in the midst of the refine- 
 ments of the metropolis was deemed by the learned 
 pedant James I. as very prejudicial to the daughters of 
 our gentry. If they were unmarried, the monarch affirmed 
 
PREFACE. VU 
 
 they marred their marriages, and if married, they rnarred 
 their reputations. The use of coal for smelting iron, when 
 the woods began to fail, the ignorant took occasion to 
 assail, and destroyed all the works. Wood was intended, 
 they said, to smelt the metallic ores. But the spirit to 
 resist all change, all progress, was possessed by too many 
 of the higher class, as well as by the ignorant. Good 
 Bishop Latimer preached up archery as a godly art ; but 
 the bow has yielded the palm to Lancaster guns and the 
 Minie rifle. Even the leading pure water through pipes 
 into dwelling houses was loudly complained of as an evil, 
 a robbing of the general public. But we need not mul- 
 tiply examples. When the principles of scientific inven- 
 tions and appliances of all kinds were understood only by 
 a few, novel introductions were often not comprehended 
 at all by the generality of persons. Too many cla- 
 moured against the novelty without any consideration of 
 its merits ; that it was new was sufficient to engage their 
 opposition and enmity. Now that the meanest objects 
 and Qiaterials of the world are made the subjects of analysis 
 and investigation by the greatest minds, what is new 
 begins to be received with some reference to its individual 
 and intrinsic excellence or comparative worth. Mankind 
 would not make progress while they agreed in concluding 
 everything new was not only not good, but positively an 
 abomination. 
 
 Even so it obtained with legislation, manners, and many 
 social matters. Their state and bearing yielded to the 
 requirements of this changing world, and the new system 
 become necessary was decried for a time as pregnant 
 with evil. 
 
 My illustrations have been sought among the middle 
 and lower classes of borough towns, rather than among 
 those of the metropolis. Royal progresses, and sumptu- 
 ous entertainments, the doings of the king and the war- 
 
 A 4 
 
VIU PREFACE. 
 
 rior, have been duly recorded in costly tomes, while the 
 inferior condition of the mass of the population, and their 
 poor mode of living, have been totally left out of sight. 
 
 What prodigies has not the genius of some men com- 
 passed within a few years ! They excite, and deservedly 
 so, our admiration, that man, the highest of created 
 beings, has attained to such a pitch of excellence. How 
 many, however, view the results of this progress with 
 widely different feelings. They clearly in their expres- 
 sions imply, that man is too far in advance of what he 
 should know and practise, and that he is guilty of pre- 
 sumption, and that the Deity views with rival feeling the 
 onward course of invention and science. So was Jupiter 
 reported by the heathens to have been exposed to the 
 aggression of the giants, when Pelion heaped upon Ossa 
 anticipated the prodigies of modern philosophers. Once 
 possessed with this dogma, all advance is viewed as a 
 march to wage war with the divine intelligence. An old 
 farmer said, God made the Old style ; man made the New. 
 A Canadian, viewing a steamer ascending a rapid, burst 
 into an exclamation of inquiry. Est ce que le hon Dieu 
 permettra tout celaf Are there not many who would 
 arrest the onward progress of man, as not only impious, 
 but as tending to accelerate — and this in the way of 
 punishment — the consummation of all things ? They 
 make it to be man's great demerit that he has exalted 
 the divine attribute Mind to a very great degree, and used 
 with wondrous skill the materials of our globe, which, like 
 the living members of the brute creation, were given for 
 his use and convenience, and as an exercise for his in- 
 telligence. 
 
 Such was the case centuries ago. Old Stow pro- 
 nounced that some who had indulged in the novelty of his 
 day, — the building of towers to their houses, — had been 
 visited by misfortune, as a punishment for their sinful- 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 ness. This consisted in adopting an architectural novelty, 
 and the necessary consequence, the being able to overlook 
 their neighbours. 
 
 The warmest friends of the past cannot be Wind to the 
 wonderful discoveries of our day. But many of these 
 they assert could well be dispensed with ; and they delight 
 in contrasts unfavourable to the new state of things. Love 
 itself, according to them, is become a tame affair, its 
 poetry is turned into prose, and now-a-day forms an 
 episode, rather than the great subject of life. Whereas in 
 bye-gone years treat but of love, and straightways you 
 had to encounter angels, gods, racks, furies, tortures, and 
 to run through all the mazes of metaphorical confusion. 
 
 Looking back upon the England of seventy years 
 ago, it seems difficult occasionally to recognise our own 
 country. 
 
 My aim has not been directed to the setting the civilisa- 
 tion of one era in contrast, or to array it against that of 
 another. The subject may have induced a belief that this 
 was so, for the remarkable features of the day are occa- 
 sionally illustrated in juxtaposition. 
 
 Many devoid of prejudice have concluded, after due 
 deliberation, that the England of the Tudors, with its 
 common rights, hospitality, and old usages, was a very 
 good England, not exactly that we would bring back if 
 we could, but prosperous and wisely organised by God's 
 good providence, according to the possibilities of the time. 
 Such persons repose much upon the adjustments that 
 society possesses, which are complex, and not to be traced 
 in all their ramifications. Allowing due weight for this 
 working for good, we must arrive at the culminating 
 point after all, — Does the Almighty allow our country- 
 men to advance in the march of civilisation, using the 
 word in its broadest sense, — in manners and customs, in 
 laws and liberties, in everything that dignifies public and 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 domestic life ; or is it that a change only has taken place, 
 and that no real improvement has been eflFected ? 
 
 It surely will have been demonstrated in these pages 
 that the whole country presents a wonderful example of 
 amelioration and hope for the future. For wise pur- 
 poses the Almighty employs his power : his ways are 
 inscrutable. 
 
 To discuss why Tudor reigns were less favoured than 
 our beloved Sovereign's, or why the Divine Intelligence 
 did not then effect, through man's instrumentality, the 
 lengths to which material science has since arrived, but 
 chose rather to leave us comparatively dark, would de- 
 mand of us to anthropomorphise the Divinity and ques- 
 tion his justice. Such is not the object of these pages. 
 That the Almighty allows of a state of progress and 
 amelioration, and moreover, that present times possess 
 advantages over the past, is my firm belief. To what 
 extent this is the case falls not within my province to 
 determine. When aiming at conveying a true picture of 
 an earlier England, should I experience the fate, let me 
 adopt the language of Dr. Andrew Borde's distich : — 
 
 After my conscyence I do wryte truly, 
 Although that many men wyl say that I do lye. 
 
 The collection from which this work has been written 
 was commenced many years ago. To enumerate the con- 
 tributors would savour of ostentation. A genuine love 
 of the subject could alone have carried me through the 
 expense and the toil. Patronage towards carrying on 
 my researches I never experienced. I have met with 
 courtesy which I trust has been reciprocated. May the 
 result be considered satisfactory, and the offering accept- 
 able. Pecuniary consideration is out of the question. 
 The cost of travelling and making researches has been 
 considerable. I have paid for inspection of some of the 
 Records and Wills of my country as if the result were 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 to be my success in an affair of thousands in a court of 
 law, whereas I have only sought knowledge " rich with 
 the spoils of Time." 
 
 County historians, many venerable names had not 
 access — without disparagement be it said — to many 
 sources which have yielded to this work. To the plan 
 and design of some of these, my subject, Social History, 
 is quite foreign. 
 
 The following list will indicate the sources of much 
 new matter. 
 
 Besides my own Collection, I have drawn from the 
 following valuable sources : — 
 
 I. The unexplored Archives of the borough of 
 
 Lyme Regis. 
 II. The Archives of Weymouth. 
 
 III. The Sherren Papers, or part of the Archives of 
 
 Weymouth, discarded under remarkable cir- 
 cumstances, now the property of Mr. James 
 Sherren, printer and bookseller, Weymouth. 
 
 IV. The MSS. Diaries of Walter Yonge, Esq., of 
 
 Colyton and Axminster, the property of the 
 Author and of the British Museum. The 
 Author's MS. has been since published by 
 the Camden Society. 
 V. Proceedings in MS. of the Dorset County Ses- 
 sions between the years 1625 and 1637. 
 Purchased by Mr. Thorpe, and inserted in 
 his Catalogue 1847. [Extracts have been 
 published by Mr. Thomas Hearn, of the 
 Dorset County Chronicle Newspaper, under 
 the signature of " Qui Quondam."*]] 
 VI. Proceedings in MS. before the Magistrates of 
 the borough of Dorchester, from 1654 to 
 1661. [* As above.] 
 VII. The History of Castle Combe. Quarto. By 
 
XU PREFACE. 
 
 the Right Honourable Poulett Scrope, M.P. ; 
 
 privately pubhshed. 
 VIII. Family Papers ; Church Registers, &c. 
 IX. Collection of the late M. de Gerville, the French 
 
 Antiquary. 
 Her Majesty's State Paper Office. 
 The British Museum Library, Harleian and 
 
 Cotton MS., &c. 
 The Bodleian Library. 
 And other sources, such as County and Borough 
 
 Histories, &c. 
 
 While drawing from these sources, it has been my aim 
 to seek Truth, " Time's daughter." Casual results have 
 not been indicated, I trust, as the intended and legiti- 
 mate ends ; nor occasional abuses as established customs, 
 having no particular school of opinions or politics to serve 
 or advocate. 
 
 To enumerate those who have at any time aided in 
 my researches would be just, though an onerous task ; 
 but I mention with pleasure the Very Reverend the Dean 
 of LlandaiF, J. Davidson, Esq., John Bruce, Esq., the 
 Rev. Dr. Oliver, Sir Frederick Madden, British Mu- 
 seum, R. Lemon, Esq., of H.M. State Paper Office, 
 Mr. James Sherren, Bookseller, Weymouth, J. Waylen, 
 Esq., and some worthies now lost to the world, M. de 
 Gerville of Normandy, and Sir T. H. De-la-Beche. 
 
 Many of the woodcuts have been executed by two 
 young ladies, the Misses Eginton, of Perdiswell Cottage, 
 near Worcester, daughters of the late celebrated painter 
 on glass, and sisters of the late Mr. Harvey Eginton, 
 the Elizabethan architect. 
 
 Worthing, 1856. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 An Account of Presents made to Great Men, and entertaining 
 them in the West of England on many Occasions, together 
 with the viands served at Table, &c. ; likewise the Manner 
 
 of their Reception - - 1 
 
 Vails to Servants - 32 
 
 The early Visits of Stage-players 35 
 
 Early Shipping and Maritime Affairs - - - 45 
 The State of our South-western Coasts when infested with 
 Pirates, early Naval Expeditions, Warfare waged by some of 
 
 our Seaports against each other, &c. 67 
 
 The arming of Towns — Introduction of Ordnance — Mus- 
 ters — Illegal Games - 100 
 The Behaviour of Soldiers upon the March and in Quarters - 123 
 Wounded Veterans pensioned by the Counties 126 
 Pilgrimage to St. Jago de Compostella - 127 
 The Importance of the Office of early Mayors - 141 
 A Litigious Person punished 143 
 A Discontented Politician suffers - 144 
 A Railer punished - 145 
 The Magistracy coerce and protect the Clergy - 145 
 
 Neighbouring Counties are restricted in their Intercourse by Ma- 
 gistrates, as if they were of separate Realms - .146 
 
 Regulation of the Number of Attorneys-at-law, Practice 1 48 
 
 The Tumbrel, Pillory, Cucking-Stool, and other Borough Instru- 
 ments of Punishment, &c. - - 1 50 
 
 Whipping - - 161 
 
 A County Gaol in the Reign of Charles the First - 1 70 
 Orders for the better Government of the Gaol and Mainprize of 
 
 Dorchester - - I7I 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Rewards offered to the Prosecutors of Offenders - 177 
 The Treatment of Under-Tenants or Incomers — The Regu- 
 lating the Population by restraining them from Marriage — 
 
 Each Cottage to have Land attached - - 179 
 
 Tlie Shoemakers faulty in respect of their Leather - 185 
 
 Some mention of Apprentices - - 185 
 
 Parties of Irish wander about - 187 
 
 A Jury recommend a Censorship - 188 
 
 Abuses into which Gleaners of Corn fell - 189 
 
 The Prices of Articles of Food, &c. - - - 190 
 The Profit made by coining Corporation and Tradesmen's 
 
 Tokens - - 203 
 An idle Woman falsely charging a Man with having promised 
 
 her Marriage is punished - - 204 
 
 The fixing by the Magistrates the Wages of Artificers and Ser- 
 vants, with a full Table of the Rates for the several Classes 205 
 
 Purchasing Corn ef great Men — Famine Prices - - 210 
 
 Mode of relieving great Want and Scarcity in the Reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth ..... 212 
 
 The Hiring of Preachers — Early Sermons — Brawls and Legal 
 Proceedings that ensued — The Progress of the Reformation 
 in the Country 213 
 
 Music in the Service of our Churches soon after the Reformation 
 
 — Choristers — Organs, &c. - - - - 231 
 
 The Sabbath Day — Punishments for Non-Observance of it 
 exhibited in Absence from Church, &c., and Profanation of it 
 in various Ways, &c. — Caps to be worn on Sundays, &c. 238 
 
 Collection of Money made for Geneva 250 
 
 Fish Diet, Licenses to eat Meat in Lent, &c. 250 
 
 Early Account of Gipsies - - 256 
 
 Medical Practice — Care of the Sick and of the Poor by the 
 
 Mayor - 260 
 
 Sanitary Measures, the Neglect and Observance of — Dung- 
 mixens in the Streets, &c. — The Streets straitened by sundry 
 
 Erections - - 276 
 
 Precautions against the Spread of Sickness - 285 
 
 The Great Plague of the Reign of Edward III. - 293 
 
 Remarks upon Domestic Architecture, Materials, Price, &c. - 296 
 
 Oak Timber in the West of England, the Price, Labour about 
 itj&c. — Notice of the Wooden -framed Houses, Healing-stones, 
 &c. - - - 298 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 Page 
 
 Early Civil Engineering, particularly in respect of Marine Con- 
 structions ... - 302 
 
 The subject extended to the transporting rocks from the shore of 
 West Dorset and E. Devon, by means of casks, butts, vats, 
 or tuns ._.-.. 308 
 
 The bringing in of a Supply of Water into Towns ; the Pitching 
 and Paving of the Streets, Vfith Details of the Efforts made 
 from the Reign of Henry VIII. to effect Local Improvements 
 in the above Particulars - - 309 
 
 The Paucity of many Articles of great Convenience in daily 
 
 Life - - - 316 
 
 Introduction of Luxuries — Chimneys — Pewter, &c. - 324 
 
 The Cobb Ale of Lyme Regis — The Puritans' Triumph over 
 
 it — Church Ales, &c. - 341 
 
 A Word or two about Spoons, Knives, and Forks used at this 
 
 Date - - 341 
 
 The Introduction of Coal into Domestic Use — Wood Stealing, 
 Local Laws and Punishments of Pollers of Trees, Hedge- 
 tearers, &c. - - - - 346 
 
 Security against Fire — Chimneys, Mantels, &c. 358 
 
 The Clothing Trade of the West of England, — a kind of Clo- 
 thiers' Parliament ----- 364 
 
 Smuggling or Contraband Trade - - - 370 
 
 The Lace Trade, its Origin, early Introduction into West Dorset 
 and South-east Devon ,• with particulars of the making Bone, 
 Lyme, PiU, i. e. Pillow, or Honiton Lace - - - 376 
 
 A Postscript about Silk-throwing ■ - - 383 
 
 Private Lotteries for Houses and Estates . 383 
 
 Joy at hailing the Return of Spring - - 385 
 
 The Western Rebellion in the Reign of Edward VI. - 387 
 
 Profitable Use made of the Ore or Sea- Weed - 388 
 
 Inability to read or write - - . 390 
 
 No mention made of Painting — Chained Books 398 
 
 Particulars respecting the Board and Education of Young Per- 
 sons of either Sex - . - _ 393 
 
 Wearing Arms - - . - . 408 
 
 Sumptuary Laws of Dress and Expenditure - 4,14 
 
 Cock-fighting and Cock-squailing - - - 421 
 
 Bowling-Greens - - _ - 433 
 
 The Manner of collecting Information from the Country on 
 
 Emergencies by the Court, in early Reigns, illustrated - 424 
 
XVI CONTEXTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 The Landing of the Pretender in the A\'est expected — Some 
 
 Particulars of the Time - - - - 427 
 
 Several Kinds of Beverages used at various Periods of our History 
 
 in the South-west of England - - - 429 
 
 Drinking when transacting Business - - - 448 
 
 Regulations for the Baking and Sale of Bread - - - 449 
 
 Beer, curious Local Orders, Laws, and Particulars respecting - 450 
 
 The stopping well-known Foot-paths - - 461 
 
 Merchant Adventurers' Petition to be allowed to continue to trade 
 
 and kidnap on the Coast of Africa . - - - 466 
 
 The Payment of the Burgesses of Parliament formerly : their 
 
 travelling Expenses^ &c. ... 468 
 
 Early Travelling in the South-west of England ; the Manner in 
 which it was performed ; the Cost of a Journey on Horseback, 
 and the Introduction of Stage Coaches, &c. - - - 480 
 
 The Post, and the Cost of JNIessengers to carry Letters before it 
 
 was established — Newspapers - - - 506 
 
 Witchcraft and Superstitions Past and Present 522 
 
 The Ordeal by touching a Corpse ... 533 
 
 Skimmington Riding - - 534 
 
 Natural Phenomena attributed, through Superstition and Igno- 
 rance of Physical Science, to Mysterious and Supernatural 
 Causes - - - - 537 
 
 The Decay of old Mercantile Coast Towns, and their Revival 
 as Watering Places — Altered Manners — Fossils and early 
 Indications of Geology - 540 
 
 Miscellaneous Reminiscences - - 559 
 
SOCIAL HISTORY, 
 
 &c. &c. 
 
 An Account of Presents made to Great Men, and entertaining 
 them in the West of England on many Occasions, together 
 with the Viands served at Table, 8fc. ; likewise the Manner of 
 their Beception. 
 
 Just as obtains with eastern manners in the present day, 
 so according to established custom in this country, from very 
 early time up to a century or little more ago, no approach to 
 a great man, a magistrate, or courtier was ever made without 
 the oriental accompaniment — a gift. Our early mayors 
 were often suitors for favour, for counsel, for indulgence, 
 and to excuse themselves and their burgesses from accusa- 
 tions brought against them. They were never empty- 
 handed ones. 
 
 If a courtier or great country squire was solicited to 
 undertake some troublesome business, a present of some 
 delicacy that abounded perhaps where the applicants came 
 from, or was freely imported thither, might appear to be 
 without objection. A pottle of wine from Gascony, some 
 " broad fish " and "shrimpis" from the south coast, might 
 prove a courteous offering, proper and effective in winning 
 good-will and stimulating the kind patron to energetic 
 exercise of his interest on their behalf. It was not this 
 simple mode of winning favour, but seeking the fountain of 
 
2 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 justice and diverting the course of its streams, that calls 
 for our animadversion. Presents made to ensure advantages 
 not fairly merited, to exclude the really deserving, are the 
 harbingers and handmaids of corruption. The highest bidder 
 or giver too often gained the desired favour, or even right, 
 that should have been granted without causing the applicant 
 to experience — 
 
 " What hell it is in suing long to bide.'' 
 
 The favour of the officers of justice was bought with a 
 a bribe at an early date. In a suit at law preferred by the 
 lord of the manor of Castle Combe in Wiltshire, in 1427, 
 20d. was given to the undersheriff for procuring his 
 friendship.* In a trial of Sir John Fastolf in 1453 there 
 was paid, — 
 
 £ s. d. 
 For fee to a clerk to the Justice Telverton to be attorney 
 
 for the Lord Fastolf - - - 18 
 
 Wine, beer, and pears for a refection to the Judge Tel- 
 verton himself - - - - - 016 
 Breakfast to the jury after they had delivered their verdict 4 7 
 To the jury for a gift (regardo) for their expenses and la- 
 bour, as well as to those who were brought as a "tales"* 2 5 
 
 In the twenty-second year of Edward IV. the mayor and 
 common council of Bristol granted a yearly fee or pension 
 of 40s. to Olyver King, the king's secretary, whilst he con- 
 tinued in the office of secretary, and which doubtless was 
 also " for the welfare of the town." 
 
 A ready answer may be furnished to one who should 
 inquire how the less opulent, not including those really defi- 
 cient in means, could win the award of justice against such 
 odds. 
 
 The Mayor of Lyme, a. d. 1590, enters for wine and sugar 
 given to Judge Anderson, 3s. id. 
 
 In 1605 a calf was given to the sheriff, and two sheep 
 given to the judges at the assizes holden at ^Nlarlborough.j" 
 
 * History of the Manor of Castle Combe, by the Eight Hon. Poulett 
 Sirope, M.P. 
 
 f ^Vaylen's Hist, of Marlborough. 
 
BEIBES TO JUDGES. 3 
 
 In 1620 the Mayor of Lyme was directed to ride to the 
 assizes, and there to invite Mr. Sergeant Ashlie to come 
 thither, and to entertain him at the town charge, that hia 
 advice may be had touching the charter. It was left to the 
 mayor's discretion what gratuity he would give to the Lord 
 Chief Baron and his men.* When a suit about Pentecostals 
 was about to be tried at the assizes held at Chard in 1621, 
 the corporation sent a purse to the judge, which cost 4*. 
 
 The renewal of charters was the occasion of much dis- 
 cussion in corporations. The consultation of lawyers and 
 application to courtiers were attended with much expense. 
 Our prudent west-country local legislators found that this 
 system of treating and making presents could not be dis- 
 pensed with. 
 
 £ s. d. 
 There was paid for entertaining of Sir Francis Ashley 
 
 from Dorchester assizes - - - 1 10 
 
 Paid more for his horse-meat - - - 10 
 
 John Newell was paid for 36 yards of fine watered 
 
 broad dowlas sent to Sir Francis Ashley - - 3 9 
 
 (Sir F. Ashley's dinner and supper at the mayor's house 
 
 in 1625 are charged 13s. 4d.) 
 The entertaining the judges by the mayor cost - 15 
 
 For the Lord Chief Baron's horses at Brewer's (Inn) f 1 2 
 
 While on the subject of bribery, additional facts will con- 
 firm us in the opinion that the system was almost universal. 
 Who can have forgotten the disgrace of Sir Francis Bacon, 
 Lord Chancellor of England in 1621 ? It was currently re- 
 ported of Sir John Bennett, a judge of the High Commission 
 Court, that he would not only take bribes of both parties, 
 plaintiff and defendant, but often shamefully beg them.f 
 Sir Lionel Cranfield, Lord Treasurer, was arrested for taking 
 bribes, two of 500/. for the customs, in 1623.$ The chan- 
 cellors to the Bishops of Peterborough and Durham were 
 questioned in Parliament, the former for having taken forty 
 bribes ! | 
 
 * Corp. Order Book. | Town Accompt Book, 
 
 J The Diary of Walter Yonge. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 SOCIAL HISTOET OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 It was charged against Richard Tilley, Mayor of Bristol 
 (16 Edward II.), that he required a present from every ship 
 and boat coming to the quay, in addition to what was given 
 to the constable. 
 
 The ladies of great officers were infected with the pre- 
 vailing disorder of their day; and turned their influence into 
 the standard coin of the reahn. The Countess of Suffolk, 
 wife of Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, Lord High 
 Treasurer of England, rendered herself very odious by her 
 rapacity in extorting money from all persons who had any 
 business to be dispatched at the Treasury. Both the countess 
 and her husband were confined in the Tower, and fined 
 30,000Z. which was reduced to 7000Z. 
 
 Even as with the fashions of a metropolis, so with its vices ; 
 when these rage they travel down and spread through the 
 provinces,, engage attention, and produce too often by no 
 means bad imitations of the prototype. Fashionable vices 
 are often found to bear a stamp that gives currency to them 
 — the word metropolitan ensures a ready adoption. Mrs. 
 Cotton, the lady of the Bishop of Exeter, is reported to have 
 taken in 1610 a fee of lOZ. from a person "to speak 
 for him." 
 
 In 1646 two silver flagons were given to the recorder of 
 Lyme which cost 24?., and two others of like value to 
 Mr. Rose. 
 
 ^Tien the judges rode the circuit the mayor entertained 
 them on many occasions, as being the head of the corpora- 
 tion, at the town charge. 
 
 In 1587 the Mayor of Lyme enters for " The judges' diet, 
 at their being here from the assizes, 30s. " 
 
 In 1646 the judges were entertained four meals at a cost 
 of IIZ. 10s., while their hosts paid likewise for their dis- 
 tinguished guests' horse-meat 3Z. 17s. Being upon the 
 subject of the visits (probably by invitation) of the judges, it 
 may be in place to record that their entertainment in 1674-5 
 cost 15Z. ; in 1676-7 that of my " Lord Jones came to 16Z. and 
 his men spent at two taverns 4Z. IDs." 
 
 Let me add, for the sake of comparison, that the entertain- 
 
LATIMER S SERMON AGAINST BRIBERY. 
 
 ment of the Dean of Sarum, when he visited his peculiar of 
 L/yme, cost 51. In 1614 the corporation of Exeter paid the 
 mayor of that city 51. towards the great expense he had been 
 at in inviting the judges at the last assizes to dinner. * 
 
 Jurymen were openly canvassed and solicited to serve 
 their friends when acting as such. An example of this 
 appears in the case of the E.ev. Giles Moore, who wrote the 
 following letter in 1664 to a juryman, with intent to serve 
 a parishioner : — 
 
 " Sir, — Because I understand that you are the first and lead- 
 ing man of the jury impannelled for John Wood of this parish, 
 tanner, and my loving friend and neighbour, whose case is to be 
 tried at these assizes, I shall desyre you therefore, as for his owne, 
 so for my sake alsoe, to doe him all lawful favour you may 
 thereon, and to the best of your judgment to serve him therein, 
 whom for your kindnesse therein shewne to him, you wiU find 
 him no less thankful, than you wiU find your friend and servant 
 
 " Giles Mooee." f 
 
 Corruption could require no more effectual process than 
 such personal applications. Each juryman was, by a com- 
 promise of principle, to lay up obligation for his future 
 benefit ; others were to become corrupt in their turn ; and 
 thus a reciprocity of corrupt practices was to be established. 
 
 An opinion hastily set up, that bribery was customary and 
 therefore somewhat excusable, is now exploded. Latimer 
 preached against the corruption of receiving bribes in his 
 usually nervous strain : — 
 
 " ' They all love bribes.' Bribery is a princely kind of thieving. 
 They wiU be waged by the rich, either to give sentence against 
 the poor : or to put ofi" the poor man's causes. This is the noble 
 theft of princes and of magistrates, — they are bribe-takers. 
 Now-a-days they call them gentle rewards : let them leave their 
 colouring, and call them by their Christian names bribes : Omnes 
 diligunt munera. ' All the princes, aU the judges, all the 
 priests, aU the rulers, are bribers.' What ? were all the magis- 
 trates in Jerusalem, all bribe-takers ? None good ? No doubt 
 there were some good." f 
 
 * Published in Western Times, 1849. 
 t Sussex Archaeol. Coll. % Vol. i. p. 1-23. 
 
 E 3 
 
G SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 And in another sermon we have this anecdote : — 
 
 " Cambyses was a great emperor, such another as our master is ; 
 lie had many lord-deputies, lord-presidents, and lieutenants under 
 him. It is a great while ago since I read the history. It chanced 
 he had under him, in one of his dominions, a briber, a gift-taker, 
 a gratifier of rich men ; he followed gifts as fast as he that followed 
 the pudding, a hand-maker in his oifice, to make his son a great 
 man; as the old saying is, 'Happy is the child whose father goeth 
 to the devU.' The cry of the poor widow came to the emperor's 
 ear, and caused him to flay the judge quick, and laid his skin in 
 his chair of judgment, that all judges that should give judgment 
 afterward, should sit in the same skin. Surely it was a goodly 
 sign, a goodly monument, the sign of the judge's skin : I pray 
 God we may once see tlie sign of the skin in England." * 
 
 Justice Hale carried his scruples regarding presents to an 
 extent which exposed him to ridicule from some, and to the 
 imputation of Pharisaical uprightness from others. Thus the 
 Dean and Chapter of Salisbury, having a case to try before 
 him on the Western Circuit, he insisted on being allowed to 
 pay for the six sugar-loaves which, according to long esta- 
 blished custom, they presented to him. The acceptance of 
 bribes was common, says ]Mr. Macaulayfj but never other- 
 wise than as a thing which was disapproved or discoun- 
 tenanced by all good men. The practice of etrennes is 
 abolished in France. 
 
 See " ^Madagascar," a poem by Sir "William Davenant, 
 quoted by Lord Campbell in his " Life of Lord Keeper 
 Coventry:" — 
 
 " Then reconcile the rich for gold-fring'd gloves. 
 The poor for God's sake, or for sugar-loaves.'' 
 
 The triumphant exposure and punishments of corrupt 
 bribe-takers on a grand scale belongs to the close of the 
 seventeenth century. In 1695 Sir John Trevor, the 
 Speaker of the House of Commons, was compelled to put 
 the question himself that he should be expelled. A bill for 
 securing the right application to poor orphans of freemen of 
 
 * Yol.i. p. 130. t Essay in the Edinburgh Review. 
 
BRIBERY IN PARLIAMENT. 7 
 
 London of funds belonging to them could not be carried 
 without purchasing the support of influential members and 
 of the Speaker himself at a bribe for the latter of 1000 
 guineas ! 
 
 Sir Thomas Cook, the governor of the East India Com- 
 pany, paid 167,OOOZ. in one year for bribes to members of 
 the House, of which Sir Basil Firebrace took for his share 
 40,000?. Corruption was universal, therefore deemed venial. 
 
 These remarks upon bribery and corruption cannot be 
 better wound up than by giving a letter from Thomas Lord 
 Howard, who had been Mayor of Weymouth, to Mr. 
 William Pytt, a diligent promoter of the interests of that 
 borough. The noble writer viewed the system in a business- 
 like way. Before moving in the matter desired, he counted 
 the cost ; and formidable did it appear. A great commercial 
 undertaking could not better have been weighed over. The 
 great outlay required to be made was certain : the success 
 doubtful. Without the outlay failure was certain. Thus, 
 at Lyme, to receive lOOZ. for the yearly maintenance 
 of the Cobb, a national work, 68?. went in fees and 
 treating ! 
 
 Thomas Lord Howard to Mr. William Pytt. 
 
 1581. 
 
 "Mr.Pyt, — I have forborn to write to you and the residue, hop- 
 ing still to have sent news to your likings; but hereunto I cannot 
 by any means possible bring it to pass, for these many great causes 
 are lets to my labours. First, for doing anything in the Parlia- 
 ment House at the present it was impossible; for when I should 
 have bestowed chargeable sums of money in framing bills, in 
 rewarding them that should speak favourably on them, in gratify- 
 ing the Speaker and other men of authority, then should I look 
 for a good passage of the bill by reason that Sir Christopher 
 Hatton's countenance and credit would work against it, and 
 surely would overthrow it when it should come to her Majesty's 
 hands ; and therefore would I not cast away your money at this 
 time in so \illegible\ affairs." * 
 
 The procuring an annual sum of only 100?. for what may 
 
 * Sherren Papers. 
 B 4 
 
8 SOCIAL HISTORT OF THE 80UTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 fairly be called a national purpose occasioned the mayor's 
 accurate rendering of an account for his expenditure and the 
 net proceeds. This detailed matter gains credit for ■svhat 
 would hardly be believed, though the scene is laid in the 
 reign of corrupt treating and gift-making. 
 
 When vre read in Blue Books of returns of sums laid out 
 upon the Cobb of Lyme, we see clearly how deceived the 
 members of the House of Commons have been, except they 
 understood the manner of transacting court business in the 
 Stuart reigns. Sixty-eight per cent, for receiving a sum 
 every farthing of which was greatly wanted I The extortions 
 of Turkish pashas in their little territories of misrule can 
 hardly exceed this example. 
 
 A Particular of the Disbursements of John Ellesdon in the time 
 of his Mayoralty, 1660, for the procuriDg the Patent of 1001. 
 per Annum, and what was necessary in order thereunto, being 
 for the repairing the Cobb and Sea Walls of Lyme Regis : — 
 
 Paid for writing the petition to his ilajesty 
 
 To a clerk to p'ruse it 
 
 For a copy of the old patent - 
 
 For new writing and examining 
 
 To Sir Richard Brown for the order of council 
 
 at two several times 
 To his clerk at two several times 
 To iir. Attorney General 5/. and to his clerk 
 
 40s. - - - - - 7 
 
 To Sir Edward Xicholas for his Maty's. hand 
 
 twice on the warrant - - - 10 
 
 To his clerk, for each time, 205. - 2 
 
 To the Signet Oface - - - - 4 16 8 
 
 To the Privy Seal Office the like - - 4 16 8 
 
 To the Patent Office - - - .476 
 
 To the Hanaper Office - - 1 18 4 
 
 For a box to put the patent in - - 8 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 £ s. 
 
 d. 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 12 4 
 
 
 
 6 7 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 18 
 
 11 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 15 19 10 
 
 Carry forward - £416 9 
 
£ 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 41 
 
 6 
 
 9 
 
 8 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 11 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 68 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 BRIBES FOR THE PALATE. 
 
 Brought forward 
 For a treatment on Mr. Hyde and friends, where was 
 also Mr. Tonge and Mr. Strode ... 
 Given to several clerks for expedition 
 To my Lord Chancellor's servants ... 
 For post of letters ... 
 For my charges, 34 days at 6s. 8c?. per diem - 
 
 Forty years from this date the deduction was forty-seven 
 per cent., then twenty-six, and at last 11. 
 
 The magnates of the country were the objects of great 
 attention and worship. When treating of the. intercourse 
 between them and our mayors, the mention of the presents 
 made to them will draw forth some remarks illustrative of the 
 times. 
 
 Mr. John Tudbold, Mayor of Lyme in 1545, enters : — 
 
 "Item, paid for a bowe and sheffe of arrows to Mr. Strang ways, 
 5s. Ad." 
 
 Who win cavil at any mention of our early national 
 weapon, so soon to be disused? At the words bow and 
 arrows who does not appear to be carried back into an- 
 tiquity in real earnest ? Can we not fancy the practising at 
 the butts by our townsmen habited like beef-eaters ? 
 
 " A potell of wine that Henry Cranley did bear to Mr. Wad- 
 ham [of Catherston] for to have a copy of the seizing of our 
 harness [armour], 6d." 
 
 The above wine must have been of the best kind, perhaps 
 of sack, as it bore so high a price. Some wine is charged 
 only 4«?. per gallon in 1549. 
 
 The Mayors of Lyme bad a rich store for the gourmands 
 at their country seats in the shrimpis — the word prawn not 
 being then in use. These delicacies were sold at 4rf. per 
 hundred. Some were sent as a present by John Hassard, 
 Mayor of Lyme in 1550-51, who enters a charge of 4s. Id. 
 
10 SOCIAL HISTOET OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 " for a venyson sent at "WHtsimtide." This was most pro- 
 bably for the great feast, the Cobb Ale.* 
 
 Some crabs given to ^Ir. Poulett were charged from 2d. 
 to 4rf. each. 
 
 In 1557 Sanders Davy was paid for himself and two 
 horses to carry broad-fish, now called flat-fish, to my Lord 
 St. John, 2$. 2d. The 2 cwt. of fish cost \l., or 10s. per 
 cwt. 
 
 At this date flat- or ground-fish were taken with baited 
 hooks set along a ground-line called a trot The trawl-net 
 had not, I believe, been invented. The trawl-net, or 
 trawl, that was first introduced, was not judged to be 
 hurtfuL "WTienever it may have been first used, it continued 
 without interruption to the year 1631. Afterwards a net of 
 the same name was in use which it was declared destroyed 
 the fry. In 1635 this trawl-net was no longer allowed. 
 Whether the trawl-net of the present century is the same, 
 and when, if so, it was again allowed, are points which I can- 
 not determine. 
 
 Whether it was difficult at all times to know what to give, 
 or that some did not from circumstances require the same 
 reception as others, we find that money was presented. 
 
 John Hassard, mayor in 1550 1, — 
 
 '•Paid to my Lord Poulett's parson, to welcome him to town, Qd." 
 
 In another entry : — 
 
 " Master Polett's clarke " received od. 
 
 There is mention of Lord Thomas Poulett at this date. 
 The two entries refer to the same individual The head of 
 the ancient Poulett family of Hinton St. George, near 
 Crewkeme, about eighteen miles from Lyme, was Loed of 
 the paramount ^Manoe of Marshwood, and exercised mano- 
 rial rights in the parish of Lyme. Sir Amias Poulett, when 
 governor of the island of Jersey in 1576, made presents of 
 red-legged partridges to several great men, who much co- 
 
 * The fine puddings of Widow Cornwallis, presented to Henry Till, 
 procured her a fair house and divers tenements of some dissolved priory 
 as Stow records. 
 
COMPAEATIVE VALUE OF SUGAE. 11 
 
 veted that variety of the partridge. The Lord Chamberlain 
 received some March 19. ; the Earl of Leicester two dozen, 
 as did also the Lord Admiral. Sir Amias Poulett refers to 
 a great catch of porpoises, then accounted a delicacy. See 
 in the Harleian MS. No. 279. fol. 14., a receipt for making 
 " a pudding of porpoise." In 1491 a large porpoise was 
 sent from Yarmouth as a present to the Earl of Oxford. 
 The fish continued for many years to be prized as a delicacy. 
 Salted porpoise, lampreys, sardines, and stock-fish are all 
 mentioned as articles of food at Southampton in the reign of 
 Edward III. A penny in twelve was paid in Elizabeth's 
 reign at Newcastle as market-dues upon the sale of porpoise 
 and seal, when cut up and sold in pieces. Of every por- 
 poise and seal the head, fins, and numbles were taken in ad- 
 dition. 
 
 In 1553 a sugar-loaf was presented to Mr. Waldron of 
 Bovey House which weighed 7 lbs., at Is. Id. per lb.* 
 (7s. 7d.) 
 
 The late Lord RoUe married the last of that branch of the 
 Waldron family. The house remains about ten miles west 
 of Lyme. The sugar-loaf was charged at a high rate, consi- 
 dering the greater value of money in Queen Mary's reign. 
 This article began to be highly prized. The sugar-cane, 
 which had been grown from the year 1148 in Sicily, 
 had been imported into Madeira A. d. 1419. About the 
 year 1503 the art of refining sugar, before called "blanch 
 powdre, " was discovered by a Venetian ; before which the 
 juice, when selected instead of honey for sweetening, was used 
 as it came from the cane. Only twenty-seven years from 
 this date, in 1526, it was imported from St. Lucar in Spain 
 by Bristol merchants. Let not the present of the Mayor of 
 Lyme be considered as a cheap article produced in abun- 
 dance in the islands of the West Indies. The sugar-cane 
 was not imported thither into Barbadoes from the Brazils till 
 the year 1641. How surprising the result of official in- 
 quiries in the year 1853 into the consumption of sugar ! It 
 
 * MS. Letter, Hinton House. 
 
12 SOCIAL HISTORT OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 amounted to 7,523,187 cwts., or 30 lbs. each individual of 
 the United Kingdom. 
 
 Mr. Morys the mayor was paid for a dinner, when Mr. 
 Yonge, the ancestor of the baronets of that name, of Ax- 
 minster and Colyton, and Mr. Wadham, the barrister of 
 Catherston above Charmouth, were at Lyme, 16s. 2d. ; and 
 for wine with the same. Is. 9d. 
 
 The mayors entertained the Ulustrious visitors, travellers, 
 and judges, and carefully entered the particular price of each 
 article of food. These civic worthies had the great yron 
 brooche, i. e. spit, and the town pewter for any feast ; and 
 were doubtless bound to invite the brethren or council to 
 join the festive board. It is only of late years, since the 
 building of the Mansion House in London, that the lord 
 mayors ceased to entertain at their private houses. 
 
 The smallest sums expended in the town's behalf are 
 faithfully recorded. Such entries set before us a picture of 
 manners true to the life. How very difficult it was in the 
 reigns of the Tudors to learn what was stirring at critical 
 periods ! How embarrassed the leading men of boroughs 
 must have often felt at a time when mistakes endangered 
 personal security and brought punishment from the court ! 
 In 1552 Mr. TudboU had the sum of 5d. paid him " for to 
 drink with Mr. H. Wadham " of Catherston " to hear news 
 of the proclamation." 
 
 How delightful must have been the meeting at the festive 
 board with great men, courtiers, and consequently gentlemen 
 of high station, who knew personally or from friends what 
 was passing in the world I Can anything be paralleled with 
 this in England in the present century ? Newspapers dif- 
 fuse knowledge throughout the land. No circle lives on for 
 days, even weeks, in ignorance of the state of affairs. The 
 wandering boccough, or beggar of Ireland, only twenty years 
 ago carried the news to western farms on the projecting 
 promontories of that island, and was a welcome guest. A 
 great man will ever be a desirable guest in a remote provincial 
 town : his manners and station, his knowledge of the latest 
 news, ensure a warm reception ; but nothing can make up 
 
CIVIC FEASTS. 13 
 
 for the loss of exclusive knowledge and superiority which his 
 equals possessed in the Tudor reigns. Happy meetings were 
 doubtless those when " the jenteU meyn weyr entertained." 
 The fare was not to be despised, for we know what the viands 
 were, for reasons before stated. Do we find cause to suspect 
 these were spoilt in the dressing ? Rather say of the good 
 Mayors of Lyme, — 
 
 " A cook they hadden with them for the nones, 
 To boil the chickens, and the marie bones, 
 And poudre marchant tart, and gallingale. 
 Well could he know a draught of London ale. 
 He coulde roaste, and sethe, and boil and frie, 
 Maken mortrewes, and well bake a pie." 
 
 Chaucer. 
 
 When entertaining and even feasting great men, did not 
 the mayors sometimes remember at their festive board how 
 courtiers had brought into the west a death-warrant for their 
 civic host, and, the tables cleared, execution had mercilessly 
 followed? Take for example the case of the Mayor of 
 Bodmin, who was thus treated after a dinner at which he had 
 done the honours. This was after the western rebellion about 
 religion in the reign of Edward VI. 
 
 The town-feasts, like other matters of which proofs may 
 be adduced, were by comparison humble in the early reigns, 
 such as that of Henry VIII. and his successors. We wUl 
 quote as an example a venison feast in Edward the Sixth's 
 reign, at Lyme Regis. " Mr. Strangways and Sir GUes 
 Strangways are recorded as kind donors of a ' doe ' and 
 * venyson.' These gentlemen were ancestors of the present 
 Earl of Ilchester of Melbury House near Sherborne, and 
 Abbotsbury Castle." 
 
 In an account about 1551 appear particulars of 
 
 The Costs done upon Mr. Strangways. 
 
 s. d. 
 (The venyson was a present.) 
 
 Baking of the venyson - - - - - 1 
 
 Item, more for a capon - - - . .09 
 
 " " jelly in one entry {reward for the venyson) 8 
 
 Carry forward 
 
14 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 S. d. 
 
 Brought forward - - - 2 5 
 Item, to Mistress Prat for a capon and 6 chicken and motton, 
 
 and a potell of wine - - - - 3 6 
 
 Item, for bread, ale, and beer, and victual of our ladies 1 8 
 
 Item, for ii. gallons and a potell - - - 1 8 
 Item, for a poteU of sack * - - - -06 
 
 Total 9 9 
 
 So much occasionally as 3s. 7d. have been paid for " one 
 that brought a doe from ]Mr. Strangways ; " more than one 
 third of the expense of the whole feast. 
 
 The ladies partook, but was this not apart from the com- 
 pany of their civic partners ? Why or how could a separate 
 account have been entered for the ladies, had they been at 
 the general table ? 
 
 Mistress Prat kept a tavern in Lyme. A barrel of olives 
 given to the Mayor of Poole in 1561 cost 8s. 6d. Saffron 
 was a choice present also. 
 
 Pepper and ginger are mentioned in the archives of South- 
 ampton in the reign of Edward III. : — 
 
 " The saucers dealt in sauces, herbs, E;,nd vegetables. 
 
 The spicers, besides spices and condiments, sold medicinal drugs.'' 
 
 The wine, ale, and beer appear to have cost about one 
 third of the whole charge, when the viands were purchased 
 sometimes one eighth. This is unlike what obtains in our west 
 country now. The wine at a festive board at a tavern costs 
 more than twice as much as the viands generally, too often 
 more than three times. A civic feast in former days yielded 
 nothing to the revenue ; now every gallon of wine furnishes 
 6s. to the country at large for the purposes of govern- 
 ment. No music is the subject of an entry. Ten years 
 after this money was paid to the minstrels at the mayor's house 
 when ]Mr. Wadham was there. 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney presented her Majesty Queen Elizabeth 
 with a smock of cambric, the sleeves and collar wrouo-ht 
 round with black silk and edged with a small bone-lace. 
 
 * Wine continued to be sold dearer. Malvesy or Malmsey, in the 
 reign of Henry IV., used to sell 140 gallons for 50s. or 53s. 4d. ; by the 
 time of Richard III. the price was 51. 6s. 8d. 
 
RIGHTS OF THE POULETT FAMILY. 15 
 
 Some routes included towns fated to be put to great charge 
 when the monarchs of England passed either way, to whom 
 a purse of money had to be presented. Swans, with a pro- 
 fusion of other dainties, were served to three dukes at 
 Shrewsbury in 1535, at a cost of 51. 18 s. 2d. 
 
 Some choice wine, together with sugar, the latter occa- 
 sionally in very small quantities, suitable it may be to the 
 costly nature of the article, was occasionally presented to 
 great men : thus in 1551 " a potell of sack and half a pound 
 of sugar were given to my Lord St. John and the rest of the 
 justices at a cost of Is. 6d." John Hassard charges 2s. 2d. 
 for wine given to my Lord of Bedford in 1557. The same 
 nobleman was entertained in 1569 at a cost of 31. 9s. The 
 business which took him round our west coast was important, 
 and it was a great point with our citizens along the coast to 
 keep him in a temper to view their exertions and occasional 
 privations with a favourable eye. 
 
 It is gratifying to perceive proofs of kindly and courteous 
 intercourse between the country gentry and the rnerchants 
 or tradesmen of the boroughs in a century when great 
 barriers existed around the landed gentry. 
 
 The Poulett family lived at Hinton St. George, near 
 Crewkerne. The squire, sometimes a knight, the head of 
 that house, imported his wine from Gascony at Lyme. When 
 the little craft with her expected cargo arrived, the squire 
 rode over, and " my Lady Poulett came to town " with him. 
 
 A banquet was furnished my Lady Poulett which cost the 
 town 7s. 6d. The " shrimpis " and the choice wine were 
 approved of. A kindly feeling was promoted. The burghers 
 directed that no toll should be demanded for the great man's 
 horses between the Cobb-gate and the Cobb, whither these 
 were driven to convey away the wine. Till a settlement 
 was afterwards come to, there were rights along the shore 
 exercised by the Poulett family as lords paramount of the 
 manor of Marshwood, the former property of the Mandeville 
 who accompanied William the Conqueror. 
 
 Sir (Amias ?) Poulett sent to the mayor and his brother 
 a venison, the charge for eating of which was 8s. This, 
 
16 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 rejecting the technical phrase, means the expense of what 
 was set on table with the venison. 
 
 The complimentary treatment and presenting wine and 
 sugar in. small quantities — for how could much have been 
 carried on horseback? — to great men whose stay was brief 
 was not a costly affair. Occasionally, from whatever cause 
 the departure from usual custom arose, perhaps sickness, or 
 to procure greater convenience, mine host furnished refresh- 
 ment, and sent in his reckoning to the mayor : — 
 
 In 1577 a potell of wine was presented to Lord Mount- s. d. 
 
 joy at a cost of - - - - -14 
 
 And again wine • - - - - 10 
 
 In 1587 wine and sugar to my Lord Zouch - - 2 6 
 
 The importance of any business in question may almost 
 be learned from the activity displayed and the value of the 
 presents. The Cobb Act was in agitation in 1585. This 
 was a weighty affair, all important to the welfare of the town 
 of Lyme, which depends so much upon the harbour called 
 the Cobb. 
 
 The heavy matters Lord Howard saw in prospect when he 
 wrote to the Mayor of Weymouth about important town 
 business that had to be forwarded, were realised at Lyme. 
 The givers of gifts were not indifferent to the duties before 
 them. A sturgeon was dispatched to the Speaker of the 
 Parliament House for his provision in Lent. The sergeants 
 of the House had sugar presented to them at the same time. 
 The door-keepers of the court at Greenwich, each perhaps 
 like any other Cerberus, required a sop of sugar to be thrown 
 to them. This Madeira sweet, potent as any medicated 
 ball, luUed each to friendly quiet, or lured them to active 
 intercession. The messenger that rode upon this errand may 
 be compared to the Amphrysian prophetess in his treatment 
 of the before-mentioned janitor : — 
 
 " Cui vates, horrere videns jam colla colubris, 
 Melle soporatam, et medicatis frugibus offam 
 Objicit. nie, fame rabida, tria guttura pandens, 
 Corripit objectam, atque immania terga resolvit 
 Fusus humi, totoque ingens extenditur antro. 
 Occupat ^neas aditum, custode sepulto." Virgil. 
 
PEESENTS TO GKEAT MEN. 17 
 
 The chamber of Exeter agreed, 10th January, 1610, that, 
 on behalf of that city, its burgesses of Parliament should 
 present the Speaker of the Parliament, in token of their 
 good will, with a hogshead of Malaga wine, or a hogshead 
 of claret, whichever they thought best in their discretion, 
 together with one baked salmon-pie, and Mr. Receiver to be 
 allowed the charge thereof. 
 
 The Recorder of Exeter, Mr. Sergeant Hale, received 
 yearly for life, from a grant made A. D. 1600, eight salmons of 
 the river of Exe, which was it appears the like number that 
 was allowed to the mayor of that city for the time being. 
 In 1612 every member of the common council that had 
 served the office of mayor was to receive two sahnons from 
 the farmer of the fishery, who was to be allowed 3s. 4rf. for 
 each.* 
 
 From some entries about a Town or Cobb bill for Lyme 
 we learn that the doorkeeper of the council had his fee. 
 
 The corslet was made clean at Lyme in 1587, at a cost of 
 2*. 6<f. Morren wore the same at Bridport 2 days, 1*. Ad. 
 Another entry exhibits the policy by which both the corslet 
 and the wearer might find favour in the eyes of those in au- 
 thority — " Paid for shrimps to the captains, 9</." 
 
 Doubtless, after eating two hundred prawns, the captains 
 judged Morren's corslet glittered brighter in the sun : spots 
 and defects waxed smaller or entirely disappeared. 
 
 The judges' diet, at their being at Lyme from the assizes 
 in 1587, is entered as having cost 30*. 
 
 My Lord Norris came along the shores of the western 
 coast in the spring of 1588, when the great Spanish Ar- 
 mada was expected. This was Sir John Norris, the lieute- 
 nant, and his company, who were entertained at supper and 
 wine by the Mayor of Lyme, April 19. 1588, at a cost of 
 4Z. 6s. 4«f. 
 
 The worthies of a borough sometimes rode to the houses 
 of the landed gentry. They carried a present with them. 
 Thus in 1590 the Mayor of Lyme enters : — 
 
 * Published first in the Western Times, 1849, 
 C 
 
18 SOCIAL HIsTOET OF THE SOrTHERX COCXTIES. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Paid for wine we carried with us to ilr. Pollet - - 3 6 
 
 Again wine and sugar for ]\Ir. Pollet - 3 4 
 
 Paid for horse-hire and for the serjeant to ride to ilr. 
 
 Waldron's and for a loaf of sugar, and for coxsebves 
 
 given there to Mr. Poppel - - - 21 1 
 
 These sweets called conserves begin to figure in presents. 
 
 In 1593 Sir George Trenchard had a box of marmalade 
 and six oea^tges* presented by the Mayor of Lyme, at a 
 cost of 7s. Sir ^latthew Arundel was entertained, but the 
 cost was only Zs. 4rf. 
 
 This worthy lived at Chideock Castle, five miles east of 
 Lvme. He only lunched or partook of a banquet. 
 
 The chamber of Exeter, about 1610, used to vote sugar- 
 loaves to ^Ir. Canon Bodley and !Mr. Canon Leach, in token 
 of their approbation of their pains taken in the morning 
 lecture at St. Peter's. 
 
 There must, when giving presents becomes a system, be a 
 change as of fashions to be worn. TVine and sugar began to 
 be obsolete. The entries figure in much grander style. 
 
 Mr EUesdon, Mayor of Lyme in 1595, enters : " Given to 
 Sir George Trenchard a fair box of marmalade gUted, a 
 barrel of conserves, orange and lemoxs and potates, 
 22s. lOd.'' 
 
 The sweet potato, or Spanish potato ( Convolvulus Batatas), 
 was known in this country before the common potato, which 
 received its name from its resemblance to the Batata. 
 
 This plant was introduced into England by Sir Francis 
 Drake and Sir John Hawkins in the middle of the sixteenth 
 centurv. The roots were about the close of the reign of 
 Elizabeth imported in considerable quantities from Spain 
 and the Canaries ; and were used as a confection rather than 
 as a nourishing vegetable. 
 
 * The first oranges and the first earthen plates were brought from 
 Spain in the reign of Edward I. 
 
CONSEEVES CONFINED TO THE GENTLE. 19 
 
 Mr. EUesdon, Mayor's Accomp. 1595. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Given to Sir George Trenchard a fair box of marmelades 
 gilted ; a barrel of conserves, orange, and lemonds, 
 and POTATES - - - - - - 22 10 
 
 1595, given to my Lord Marquis (of Winchester) a box of 
 marmelade gilted, containing 7^ lb. at 2s. ; a barrel of 
 conserves, containing 4 lb. at I3d. the lb. ; 4 lb. dry 
 conserves at 2s. the lb. ; okanges and lemons at 6s. the 
 HUNDRED - - - - - - 32 10 
 
 Carriage of the same, and the Serjeant's charges - - 21 3 
 
 On this occasion no ordinary messenger rode with the 
 present to my Lord Marquis, but the sergeant had the choice 
 sweets confided to his care. We have seen what a really 
 expensive thing communication with parts not very distant 
 was: upwards of sixty-four per cent, was added to the 
 original cost for mere expenses of sending a messenger with 
 the sweets. 
 
 A letter is extant from Sir Francis Walsingham to a 
 correspondent in the Weymouth corporation, anxiously 
 pressing for the purchase of a quantity of conserves. These 
 western ports must have been the places where these delica- 
 cies could be procured. Great men found them very desir- 
 able for presents to courtiers and their equals. In 1581 all 
 persons in Scotland, not being dukes, earls, &c., possessed of 
 at least 2000Z. of yearly rent, that is, of 2501. sterling, were 
 prohibited from the use of confections, foreign drugs, and 
 costly spices, which were wont to be lavishly used at 
 weddings, christenings, and other banquets by persons of 
 low estate. 
 
 A slight digression may be excused while upon the 
 subject of presents. Officers of rank sufficient to require 
 their presence at the court of a native prince in our Indian 
 possessions, have, according to oriental use, to make a 
 present; and they, by a reciprocity nicely adjusted by an 
 eastern, receive a present in return. Some had laid them- 
 selves out to make great profit by this system, till the abuse 
 caused the Company to take the matter into their own 
 
20 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 hands. The resident has a store from which he furnishes 
 each officer with a strictly suitable present, and into which 
 is carefully put away whatever article has been given in 
 return. 
 
 Towns in the road liable to be traversed by royalty had 
 demands made upon the corporations, under certain circum- 
 stances, and claims to be considered under other cases, which 
 merit notice. 
 
 The harbinger had 11., the trumpeter 10s. and 22s., the 
 macebearer 10s., and the swordbearer lis. 
 
 When these sums were paid at Marlborough in the year 
 1618, there was an entry, for thefuture guidance of the mayor, 
 to this effect, that these gifts were by consent all given out of 
 courtesy only, for that there is nothing due unto any such 
 of his Majesty's servants, unless the king go through the 
 town in state, and then only, as they themselves affirm, are 
 their fees belonging unto them of right by patent.* 
 
 The king's brewers and bakers had faggots furnished them 
 at a cost of 10s. 9d. in 1623. In 1677 paid for herbs and 
 beer when the queen went to Bath, 15s. ; and in 1687, for 
 rushes when the king came, 30s. Presented to the king, 
 501* 
 
 The passing of the royal family and court was viewed as a 
 great misfortune. 
 
 The entertaining Lord and Lady Hertford and their fol- 
 lowers at Marlborough in 1617 cost 30Z. 7s. 4c?. 
 
 Having treated of the reception of great men at dinner, let 
 us see what a dinner for the company, that is, the corpora- 
 tion, was when they were without illustrious guests — such 
 as is charged at about 16s. There was paid for an accountiyig 
 dinner, or one given after making up the Cobb accounts at 
 Lyme in 1608, clearly at a tavern : — 
 
 Item, for a chine of beef - - . 
 
 More for a rib of beef 
 
 Carried forward £ 5 4 
 
 * Waylen's History of Marlborough. 
 
 £ 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 - 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 - 
 
 2 
 
 
 
COKPORATION FEASTS. 21 
 
 
 
 
 £ s. 
 
 d. 
 
 
 Brought forward - 
 
 • 5 
 
 4 
 
 3 for 
 
 a piece of boiled beef and 
 
 CABBAGE 
 
 - 1 
 
 4 
 
 (£ 
 
 leg of mutton 
 
 - 
 
 - 1 
 
 4 
 
 ii 
 
 loin of mutton and bruse 
 
 (broth) 
 
 1 
 
 » 
 
 it. 
 
 capon 
 
 - 
 
 - 1 
 
 6 
 
 ii 
 
 couple of wigeons 
 
 - 
 
 - 1 
 
 4 
 
 ii 
 
 fruit and cheese 
 
 - 
 
 - 1 
 
 
 
 it 
 
 fire - 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 4 
 
 (t 
 
 bread and beer 
 
 
 - 3 
 
 4 
 
 
 £ 17 
 
 2 
 
 " 
 
 potell of Malaga wine 
 
 - 
 
 - 2 
 
 
 
 « 
 
 " " claret 
 
 
 - 1 
 
 4 
 
 a 
 
 pint of Canary " 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 S 
 
 ii 
 
 quart of claret " - 
 
 
 - 
 
 8 
 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 
 Total amount 
 
 . 
 
 £1 1 
 
 r 
 
 Cabbage was, half a century after this, introduced into 
 Scotland by Cromwell's soldiers. It was deemed worthy of 
 mention here. Did Sir Anthony Ashley of Wimborne St. 
 Giles introduce the cabbage, a vegetable unknown to our 
 countrymen, or did the specimen at his feet on his tomb 
 indicate that he introduced that variety ? Hudson Turner 
 states that the cabbage tribe was known in the middle ages. 
 
 In 1623 Nicholas Somers's wife was paid for a dinner for 
 the company, i. e. the whole corporation of Lyme, 16*. 8c?. 
 (N. B. This was about the sum each member of the town 
 council had to pay for his dinner at the Cups' Hotel, in 
 the same town, in 1846.) 
 
 The same year Mr. John Drake and his company came 
 for a burgess's place in the room of Mr. Robert Hassard, 
 deceased. Their entertainment cost 16*. 
 
 This is strikingly in contrast with some feasts resulting 
 from elections in this century, given in the same town, when 
 about 5001. were spent. 
 
 The frugality of receptions, when business had to be dis- 
 cussed, was very great. Sir "Walter Erie and his brother, 
 
 c 3 
 
22 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 who had been very active about procuring ordnance for the 
 government for Lyme, dined with the mayor in 1625 at a 
 cost of 6s. 8d. 
 
 Afterwards, the same year. Sir Walter Erie and his 
 brother and their men were entertained at two meals, when 
 they came to receive instructions for the Parliament, 1/. 
 
 A larger party, consisting of Sir Walter Erie, Sir Richard 
 Strode, Mr. Recorder and others, were entertained, 27th 
 July, 1630, by the mayor, who charged U. 13s. 8d. 
 
 The great feast of Lyme does not come within the bounds 
 of this article. It was paid for by those who partook, and 
 was not an entertainment given by the town. 
 
 The entertainments, made up from presents and contri- 
 butions of friendly gentry, render nugatory any attempts to 
 ascertain the real cost. 
 
 While on the subject of homely and other feasts given or 
 paid for, it will be appropriate to show the bill of fare in 
 the west for two receptions of royalty in 1625. 
 
 King Charles I., when riding into the west to Plymouth, 
 stopped to dine at Ford House near Teignmouth, 15th 
 September, and again on his return, 24th September. 
 
 The king lay the 14th September at Hinton House, the 
 seat of Mr. Poulett (soon after created Lord Poulett), while 
 the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Holland, the Earl 
 of Derby, Sir Robert Killigrew, and many other gentlemen 
 lay at Ash House, the seat of the Drake family, at Musbury, 
 between Axminster and Colyton, near the coast road from 
 Dorchester to Exeter. 
 
 The Earl of Essex and the Earl of Arundel passed west- 
 ward soon after, all being on their way to review the fleet and 
 land forces at Plymouth under orders for sea. 
 
 Ford House was the seat of Sir Richard ReyneU, a learned 
 and eminent lawyer of the Middle Temple. 
 
 His Majesty returned to Ford House 24th September. 
 
 A great proportion of the viands were sent in, as it was 
 termed, for the king and great lords' entertainment. 
 
 There were at the — 
 
ROYAL BILLS OF FAEE. 
 
 23 
 
 First Entertainment. 
 
 A buck and a side 
 
 of venison 
 
 14 pullets. 
 
 from Mr. Reynell 
 
 of Ogwell. 
 
 6 geese. 
 
 A buck from Mr. 
 
 Poulett of 
 
 71 turkeys. 
 
 Hinton House. 
 
 
 28 pigeons. 
 
 Fish. 
 
 
 1 pea-hen, 
 
 3 dories, 
 
 
 2 mallards. 
 
 2 mullets, 
 
 
 2 green plovers, 
 
 2 gurnets. 
 
 
 8 plovers. 
 
 25 peels. 
 
 
 1 gull, 
 
 2 salmons, 
 
 
 36 larks, 
 
 8^ pair soles. 
 
 
 38 rabbits, 
 
 Game and Fowls. 
 
 1 hare, 
 
 140 partridges, 
 
 
 Besides mutton, veal, lamb, 
 
 7 pheasants, 
 
 
 and 
 
 61 chickens. 
 
 
 6 artichokes. 
 
 46 capons, 
 
 
 Whole expense of what was 
 
 10 ducks, 
 
 
 purchased, 28Z. 13«. 5d. 
 
 
 Second Entertainment. 
 
 A buck from Sir Amias Pou- 
 
 14 capons. 
 
 lett. 
 
 
 112 chickens, 
 
 A doe from Mr. Luff of Torre. 
 
 4 ducks, 
 
 A hunted teague (a 
 
 doe of one 
 
 6 geese, 
 
 year old) from Dr. Clifford. 
 
 30 sea-larks. 
 
 A mutton, killed and dressed, 
 
 11 curlews. 
 
 from Mr. Beard. 
 
 
 258 larks. 
 
 Fish. 
 
 
 1 heath-poult. 
 
 160 mullets. 
 
 
 2 nynnets. 
 
 42 whitings, 
 
 
 6 sea-pyes, 
 
 4 salmons, 
 
 
 1 stone-curlew. 
 
 7 peels. 
 
 
 4 teals. 
 
 7 dories. 
 
 
 3 pea-hens. 
 
 21 plaice, 
 
 
 2 gulls. 
 
 26 soles, 
 
 
 Substantials. 
 
 48 lobsters. 
 
 
 6 oxen and kine. 
 
 550 pilchards, &c. 
 
 5 muttons. 
 
 Game and Fowls. 
 
 2i veals. 
 
 69 partridges, 
 
 
 Several entries of ribs of 
 
 5 pheasants, 
 
 
 beef, quarters of mutton. 
 
 12 pullets, 
 
 
 chines, tongues, a side of 
 
 4 
 
21 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 lamb, and a Westphalia 1 barrel Canary wine, 
 
 gammon. 35 quarts white wine. 
 
 Liquors. Whole expense, 551. 5s.* 
 2 hogsheads of beer. 
 
 The visits of royalty made to private individuals when on 
 a tedious journey to execute a necessary public duty, raight 
 well have passed with universal approbation. The travelling 
 and the feasting brought no addition to taxation, while many 
 great men gratified themselves and neighbours with a feast 
 in this monarchical country of which the king partook in 
 person. 
 
 The gentlemen of the country party must have been 
 greatly dissatisfied with the state of afiairs. An incident will 
 prove the existence of this feeling. 
 
 Mr. Pyne, a country squire, having a company of guests 
 at his table at his seat at Curry Malet, talked very irre- 
 verently of the king, saying to one who had boasted of 
 having seen the king at Mr. Poulett's at Hinton House, 
 " Then hast thou seen as unwise a king as ever was ; for he 
 is carried as a man would carry a child with an apple. As 
 for meeting him at Mr. Poulett's, that is nothing, for I might 
 have had him at my house ; he is to be carried any whither. 
 Before God he is no more fit to be king than Earkwright." 
 This Kirkwright was a well-known simpleton. 
 
 For these words the government wished that Mr. Pyne 
 should be hanged, drawn and quartered. Chief-Justice 
 Richardson said, though the words were as wicked as might 
 be, they did not amount to treason. This saved Mr. Pyne.f 
 
 Mr. Hugh Pyne the counsellor, Mr, Jo. Symes, and some 
 others of Somersetshire were soon after put out of the com- 
 mission of the peace. In 1627 Mr. Hugh Pyne was com- 
 mitted for saying the king was stripped and governed by a 
 company of upstarts.J 
 
 * Lysons' Devon, from Chappie's Collections. 
 
 t Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chief- Justices of England, vol. i. p. 391. 
 Life of Richardson. 
 
 + Diary of Walter Yonge. Camden Society. Edited by Geo. Roberts. 
 
judges' dinners. 25 
 
 About the close of James I.'s reign presents continued to 
 be made. In 1621 the Mayor of Lyme sent, on the part of 
 the town, a sugar-loaf weighing 15 lb., and oranges and 
 lemons, to Lord Poulett, 1?. In 1625 a pottle of Canary 
 wine to Sir Thomas Fooke, Sir Walter Erie, and the Lord 
 Treasurer's steward, 2s. each. In 1631 one hundred oranges 
 and lemons to my Lord Poulett, 14s. 4d. In 1631 sent to 
 Salisbury to the Doctor, i. e. the prebendary Dr. Roger Bates, 
 6 lb. conserves and a little sugar-loaf, 15s. lOd. — 
 11. Is. lOd. 
 
 The gentry who met at Charmouth in 1665, to settle some 
 differences between the town of Lyme and the hundred, were 
 entertained on each occasion at an expense of 21. 7s. 4rf., 
 71. 6s. and 61. 15s. 
 
 Sir John Strode, of Parnham, had a present sent to him of 
 wine, and the carriage, 71. 6s. 
 
 A dinner for the corporation in 1672 cost for- — ■ 
 
 
 £ s. 
 
 d. 
 
 3 peck of flour - 
 
 - 3 
 
 
 
 12 quarts of Canary 
 
 - 1 4 
 
 
 
 1 1 quarts of white and claret 
 
 - 11 
 
 
 
 Mutton and lamb 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 Dressing and other charge 
 
 - 10 
 
 
 
 Kose-water, sugar, and salt 
 
 - 
 
 9 
 
 £2 4 9 
 
 The Lord Chief- Justice and his colleague were entertained 
 at Lyme in 1674-75 at a cost of 151. A bill for shell- 
 fish enables us to ascertain the prices paid in Charles ll.'s 
 reign for these dehcacies. Mr. Walter Tucker, mayor, paid 
 for the judges, for — 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 30 lobsters - - - - 1 10 
 
 6 crabs - - - - -060 
 
 100 scallops - - - - 5 
 
 300 oysters - - - - 4 
 
 50 oranges - - - - 2 
 
 £2 7 
 
£ s. 
 
 d. 
 
 - 6 
 
 6 
 
 - 5 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 - 5 
 
 6 
 
 - 10 
 
 8 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 £ 1 13 
 
 
 
 26 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 For wine 
 " beer - 
 " fire - 
 " horsemeat 
 " oats - 
 " 3 pocket of beans 
 
 The judges on the circuit had so many presents of venison, 
 fruit, wine, &c., that these half kept their table. These 
 presents were discontinued after the year 1784, when so 
 much was subscribed for the defence of the nation then ex- 
 pecting invasion. Till the passing of the Municipal Reform 
 Act the corporation of Gloucester always sent each judge in 
 spring a salmon and a house lamb, and in summer a salmon 
 and a whole sheep. The corporation of Oxford still con- 
 tinue their present to each judge of white kid gloves, edged 
 with gold lace and ornamented with gold tassels.* 
 
 In 1676-7 Mr. Robert Cawley, mayor, entertained £ s. d. 
 my Lord Jones, as he styled the judge, at an expence 
 of - - - - 16 14 2 
 
 Thomasin Davy f, keeper of a tavern, entertained the 
 judge's men - - - - -094 
 
 Bowdidge do. - - 4 10 
 
 ^21 4 6 
 
 Soon after the Duke of Monmouth had marched out of 
 
 Lyme, the " Suadadoes " frigate captured the duke's " Pink" 
 
 and " Dogger." 
 
 Captain Trevanion was entertained at a cost of 
 Captain Dyer was honored by a treat - 
 Sixty men, who landed 29 June, 1685, from the frigate, 
 and whose services were likely to be required, had three 
 loaves of bread, and three cheeses - - . 
 
 Beer from Goody Collier - . - 
 
 A gratuity among them in cash ... 
 
 * Notes and Queries, 1^0.319. 
 
 t Her pigs ran at large in the streets ; but being found to have preju. 
 diced the graves, they were presented by a jury. 
 
 £ s. 
 
 d. 
 
 1 7 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 1 3 
 
 
 
 1 15 
 
 
 
COFFEE. TEA. — THE TREAT. 27 
 
 When the " Bloody Assize " was in progress Judge 
 Jeffreys and his four attendant judges partook of a dinner 
 extraordinary for its expense. The mayor had long to con- 
 tend with the objectors to his accounts. Mr. Gregory 
 Alford wrote, at the end of his mayoralty, that this dinner had 
 cost him more than 40?. Gammons, wine, and a sturgeon 
 had been omitted. 
 
 As the subject leads to mention of the articles of food for 
 entertainment the following may be deemed not irrelevant : — 
 The bill for attendance at the Dorchester Assizes in 1686 
 of Mr. John Bragge, the town-clerk of Lyme, presents this 
 novelty — the article coffee is charged 2d. This may have 
 been drunk at a coffee-house. Coffee was introduced from 
 Turkey in 1650. 
 
 An advertisement in the Mercurius Politicus, Sept. 30. 
 1658, instructs how " That excellent and by all physitians 
 approved China drink, called by the Chineans Tcha, by 
 other nations, tay alias tee, is sold at the Sultana's Head 
 Coffee-house, in Sweeting's-rents, by the Royal Exchange, 
 London. — " 
 
 There was a " cophee-house " in St. Michael's-alley, Corn- 
 hill, about 1657.* Tea, coffee, and chocolate were placed 
 under the excise. There was no tax upon these commodi- 
 ties when imported, but when made into drink, as tea was, at 
 Srf. a gallon, and sold at these houses. 
 
 In Charles II. 's reign great men travelhng into the west 
 were honoured by a treat, and not always entertained at 
 dinner. The latter often required a delay beyond what was 
 convenient to the host and his guest. The treat was given 
 at a tavern. The junket was a treat given al fresco in the 
 country. 
 
 The Earl of Stamford highly commended the great treat 
 the town of Lyme had given him after the Oxford Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 In 1699 the treating the Duke of Bolton and his atten- 
 dants at the " Three Cups," Lyme, cost 1/. 6s. 3d. ; besides 
 this honour, the guns were fired twice, 13s. 3d. 
 
 * Quarterly Review, 1854. Eccleston. 
 
28 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 In 1702 the Earl of Rochester's entertainmeDt cost 4?. 12s. ; 
 firing the guns, 5s. 
 
 In 1703 there was spent in treating the Barons of the Ex- 
 chequer and Judge of Assize, II. 9s. 3d. 
 
 In 1708-9 for the gentlemen appointed to survey and re- 
 port the condition of the Cobb to S. Butler, a tavern-keeper, 
 71. 7s. lid. 
 
 The practice of purchasing wine from a wine merchant to 
 be drunk at a feast held at a tavern now obtained : Na- 
 thaniel Gundry was paid for wine on the above entertain- 
 ment of the government officers, II. The gallon of sack 
 required for the mayor's feast under the will of Thomas 
 Tudbold, and paid for out of the Tudbold rents, cost, in 1687, 
 six shillings. 
 
 In 1734-5, entertaining the Bishop of Bristol, lOZ. 
 That the great who happened to be at Lyme and the 
 corporation should feast at a tavern about this time need not 
 surprise us, when we learn that the town pewter had been 
 sold ; and thus the mayor was deprived of the means of fur- 
 nishing out his table as of old : 24 platters, 6 pie plates, 2 
 pasty plates, 72 trencher plates, weighing 411 lbs. at 7d. 
 per lb. fetched IIZ. 19 s. 8d. 
 
 The principal cause, however, which worked the change, 
 was the low state of the town of Lyme, like that of Wey- 
 mouth, owing to the altered circumstances of trade, and the 
 different class of individuals that filled the civic chair. Many 
 lived in houses where the great spit and the town pewter 
 would not have been in place. A change from the private 
 residence to a tavern became indispensable. 
 
 At Marlborough, when that town flourished, by the Liii. 
 law of the borough, made in 1627, this evil was provided 
 against in the following language by some prescient local 
 lawmaker: "If a mayor neglect to occupy a reasonable 
 house during his term of office, he shall be fined 501. in 
 addition to losing his fee, and be disfranchised in the room 
 of another more fit man."* This was good against the 
 meanness of a miserly mayor ; but inefficient where a town 
 * Waylen's History of Marlborough. 
 
CIDEE. PRAWNS. PUNCH. 2 9 
 
 was in such a declining condition that no residents able to 
 feast their municipal brethren could be found. 
 
 In the years 1680 and 1703 a cook and a barber received 
 their freedom at Youghal, county Cork, in Ireland, on con- 
 dition that they would respectively dress the mayor's feast 
 and shave the corporation gratis ! * 
 
 Little tavern accounts may enlighten us as to the varying 
 manners of the aige. Some bills prove that the progress had 
 not been towards refinement. Ata feast, 5th November, 1737 
 (say for twenty persons), at a tavern there is charged for — 
 
 Ordinaries . - - . - 
 
 Wine ------ 
 
 Beer, cidee, and ale 
 
 Candles and tobacco - - - - 
 
 Beer, gunners, and drummers - 
 
 For firing - - - 
 
 Sugar, lemons, and glasses - . - 
 
 Wine after the bill delivered 
 
 Beer, firing, and tobacco - , . 
 
 Sherry wine, in a commercial point of view, dates from 
 about this time. 
 
 No bill for feast or treat at any place, of all examined for 
 this article, was found to have any mention of cidee as used 
 at table, and charged for with beer and ale before -this one. 
 
 In 1746-7 appear two novelties in the bill of a corpora- 
 tion dinner — a dish of lobsters and prons (prawns), previously 
 called shrimps, 3s., and a bowl of punch (large) 5s. A 
 bottle of wine, 2s., only was used. Beer, ale, and cider, 
 10s. Ad.; a foreign ham, 12s.; an English ham, 7s. The 
 gunners, beer, and wood for the bonfire made the bill amount 
 to 71. 14s. Qd. 
 
 It is a proof of sense in our old corporation heads that 
 they were anxious to obtain the advice of clever professional 
 men respecting the sea-works. When Kane William Hor- 
 
 * Notes and Queries, April 1. 1854. 
 
 £ 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 1 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 - 2 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 8 
 
 10 
 
 - 
 
 3 
 
 6 
 
 - 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 - 
 
 I 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 I 
 
 10 
 
 £ 5 
 
 15 
 
 
 
30 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 neck, Esq., was engaged in making anew the harbour at the 
 mouth of the Eiver Brit, called Bridport Harbour, he was 
 invited over and consulted. 
 
 £ s. d. 
 A treat was given to Mr. W. K. Horneck in 1744 at the 
 
 " Three Cups," which cost - - - -1116 
 
 A messenger to Bidport to ascertain ahout the time for 
 
 ordering the treat - - - - 1 
 
 Chickens and spring-grass to young Mr. Horneck - 6 6 
 
 The honour of the freedom of Lyme Regis was conferred 
 upon this civil engineer in 1744. 
 
 When the town of Lyme was reduced to its lowest state, 
 a desire to honour remarkable occasions and striking events 
 by a feast at some one of the two principal inns was made 
 manifest. In 1760-1 no less than 40Z. were expended in 
 celebrating the King of Prussia's beating Count Daun, the 
 taking of Belleisle, Pondicherry, &c., and in providing the 
 boys with furze and wood for a bonfire. 
 
 In many boroughs no notice is taken of great persons, and 
 feasting is discontinued for the best of reasons, because the 
 funds are in a low state. Conviviality is believed to have 
 been productive of union in a borough and in a parish. If 
 there is but little for a feast now and then, there can be no 
 funds for grand entertainments of great men, their attendants, 
 and horsemeat. 
 
 The mention of the town broche or spit recalls to mind 
 that indispensable prime-mover of the same with its savoury 
 charge, the turnspit dog, a breed now rarely seen. Without 
 his friendly or compulsory labours the due progress of dinner 
 was arrested as much as if the mUlstream were diverted from 
 its course, or the steam-engine of a mill had exploded. Some 
 seventy years ago cooks and their underlings were seen 
 running about the city of Wells with great inquiries each for 
 her truant. Some one just arrived from the country had 
 seen a frolicsome young midshipman giving fifty turnspit 
 dogs an excursion upon the neighbouring Mendip hill. The 
 spits could not be turned, and the necessity of the case 
 prompted each cook to provide other viands as a substitute. 
 
THE ESCORT AND THE BONEIEE. 31 
 
 The improved jack caused the breeding of turnspits to be 
 discontinued. 
 
 Having treated of the presents made, and viands served up 
 to great men, let the manner of their coming, and the style 
 in which they were met and welcomed be deemed worthy of 
 some slight notice. This will present a contrast with the 
 manners of the present day. 
 
 In order to give an idea of an ordinary reception of a great 
 man, the following picture has been drawn from a digest of 
 many instances recorded : — 
 
 Where great men rode through the country honours were 
 expected to be paid by towns to them, and there was seldom 
 occasion of complaint, so fond boroughs would seem to have 
 been of maftitaining a character for making such a display. 
 The highways, properly lanes, were mended. The great 
 man's time of arrival on horseback having been ascertained, 
 some seven or eight hundred horsemen rode out to accom- 
 pany him to town; but three or four hundred formed an 
 especial escort, and these wore white waistcoats, and had 
 rods or wands in their hands. Musicians tooted as they 
 marched. 
 
 The mayor and principal corporators presented wine and 
 sugar. Some of the principal inhabitants proffered all their 
 houses contained, and had wood from their premises carried 
 out to make a bonfire in honour of the great man. While 
 this was burning the townsmen stood round, and the best 
 drank the health of the honoured visitor : the lower in 
 station were treated with beer. 
 
 The above picture is one of peaceful Iribute by the whole 
 town of respect and the highest honour. When in Charles 
 II. 's reign towns were divided, the bonfire-scene assumed a 
 different aspect. In the midst of this joyous festivity of 
 complimenting and drinking of healths, a determined party 
 came to disturb the quiet and harmony and to quench the 
 bonfire. This interruption would at all times call forth the 
 fiercest elements of discord; but, to excite a greater ferment, 
 the foremost carried vessels not applied in domestic economy 
 to any but undignified uses, and selected these purposely in 
 
32 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 order to produce a casus belli; whereupon a fearful riot at 
 once ensued. 
 
 If the great man went to church, a path was swept all the 
 way; a voluntary was played on the organ when he entered; 
 and the sermon with the whole service was like a reception 
 as we may fancy in a Roman basilica. When aU went oii 
 pleasantly, eulogium and panegyric were the only sentiments 
 heard; to assist in which Scripture was ransacked and dex- 
 trously wrested. When there was opposition, an unfriendly 
 preacher assailed the great man, and perhaps drove him from 
 the church with his immediate friends. The rioters stayed 
 to curse the preacher with the bitterest imprecations, and to 
 accompany him home with these and dreadful threats. 
 
 Supper was a favourite meal for the assembling of the 
 great man's friends. Inferior partisans, distinguished for 
 great zeal, and even daring, were introduced after the cloth 
 was removed, and words of encouragement were addressed. 
 The Duke of Monmouth's stereotyped phrase was, " Thou 
 art an honest fellow : thou deservest encouragement." The 
 great man generally hunted, and also rode round the bowling- 
 green, the place of resort for many years, which was full for 
 the occasion. The Quakers were fond of presentations, and 
 spoke with their hats on language of adulation, though not 
 couched in the usual strain. " We are all for thee '' is a 
 phrase that could not be exceeded in clearness of expression, 
 though the sentiment might have been extended into the 
 domain of hyperbole. The latter figure was too often used 
 when the time was truly " a drunken and a roaring one." 
 
 Vails to Servants. 
 
 Vails given to servants, vestiges of the ancient largesses, 
 made the visiting at great men's houses a very expensive 
 affair. 
 
 Bishop Hoadly visited the Duke of Marlborough at 
 Blenheim, together with Sir Richard Steele. On going 
 
VAILS TO SERVANTS. 33 
 
 away, they had to pass through an army of laced coats and 
 ruffles in the hall, and as the bishop was preparing the usual 
 fees, " I have not enough " cried his companion, and, much 
 to the episcopal discomposure, proceeded to address the 
 footmen ; told them he had been much struck by the good 
 taste with which he had seen them applauding in the right 
 place at some theatricals up-stairs, and invited them all gratis 
 to Drury Lane Theatre, to whatever play they might like to 
 bespeak. 
 
 A colonel of engineers relates an anecdote of his grand- 
 father, a man of engaging manners, who was a resident of 
 the city of Hereford, and who was invited frequently to dine 
 at the palace with the bishop. When taking his departure 
 at night for his own house, the servants used to assist him, 
 each having contrived to present some article of his dress, 
 hat, coat, stick, gloves. On one occasion this officer having 
 an old pair of gloves, and disgusted at the thought of the 
 money he had already given to the domestics, made a present 
 of the gloves to the bearer of them. Having repeatedly 
 refused the bishop's invitation, his lordship fancied there had 
 been some cause of afiront ; so he asked the reason of so many 
 refusals. With great candour, the invited guest said he 
 could not afford to eat so costly a dinner. The good bishop 
 was startled, and, upon asking for an explanation, was told 
 what the average cost was of dining at the palace and doing 
 as others did. The bishop was forcibly struck at this, and 
 could then account for the absence of others. He at once 
 took measures to remedy the evil. 
 
 When vails were given the servant inquired as much 
 about his proposed master's doings and habits as the master 
 now does into those of the servant that offers. This is said 
 to be the case in some parts of the sister kingdom. " Pray 
 sir," said James, a deceased gentleman's butler, to a rich 
 master in want of a servant, " how often do you entertain, 
 and how many do you invite at a time ? " The gentleman 
 said, " Once a week ; I see eight friends at dinner." " Then, 
 sir, I am afraid your place will not suit me : I shoidd not 
 like to engage where there is not company twice a week,' 
 
 D 
 
34 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Certainly the man was right, if his wages were little in con- 
 sequence of vails, to be sure that these were likely to be 
 adequate or remunerative. 
 
 In giving vails to the servants it must be apparent that 
 there ought to be some graduated rule observed in the dis- 
 tribution, as the recipients, however deserving, filled various 
 offices, not equal in point of degree or estimation. And 
 such was carefuUy observed by a Sussex gentleman, Mr. 
 Timothy Burrell. His ratio for the distribution of 3Z. 0^. 9d. 
 is appended. With a round of visitors behaving with equal 
 generosity throughout the year the sum each domestic 
 received would have compensated for low wages which were 
 given at the close of the seventeenth century. Can we 
 expect that all servants were exempt from the ordinary 
 feelings of humanity? no; we must allow to them their 
 share of the common weakness of mankind. They lavished 
 beyond all doubt an extra share of attention upon those who 
 were very liberal, and must too often have made a distinction 
 to the prejudice of those who had not given with the same 
 bountiful hand. This made a great house furnish a com- 
 parison with an inn. 
 
 £ s. d. £ s. d. 
 
 Mr. Johnson 
 
 - 10 
 
 9 
 
 Brought forward 
 
 - 2 
 
 5 
 
 9 
 
 Chambermaid 
 
 - 10 
 
 
 
 Under-cook 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 Cook 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 Boy - 
 
 - 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 Coachman - 
 
 - 5 
 
 
 
 Under-gardener 
 
 - 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 Butler 
 
 - 5 
 
 
 
 Nurse 
 
 - 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 Chief gardener 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 &c. &c. 
 
 
 
 
 Carried forward £ 2 5 9 Total, - ig 3 9 
 
 Mr. Burrell enters on one occasion 10s. Qd. to the servants 
 of a relation's family without specifying how it was to be 
 shared. 
 
 The honoured person upon whom certain court distinctions 
 have been conferred is still called upon to pay certain fees, 
 in which the servants of the royal household receive in 
 stated portions their ancient largess or vails. 
 
MONET PAID TO PLATEKS. 35 
 
 The early Visits of Stage-players. 
 
 Evert supreme civil functionary of borough towns in the 
 south of England had much to enter in his accounts, owing 
 •to the visits of the earliest perambulatory stage-players. 
 The mayors were mixed up with the performance, the locality 
 and the licence. "We shall learn how intimately the borough 
 magistrates were obliged to enter into the circumstances of 
 the scenic exhibition, to which many of them were little 
 adapted by previous taste or education. 
 
 The date of the first visit of a company of stage-players 
 to the west — whether earlier than Henry VIII. 's reign or 
 not — has not been ascertained. 
 
 The visit of my Lord Admiral's players to Lyme Eegis 
 proved a memorable event in the year 1547. 
 
 These performers played at Richard Leonard's house ; 
 clearly an inn or public house. The Mayor Thomas Elles- 
 don used an expression which will require some remark. 
 
 This worthy ordered that Is. should be paid towards these 
 players. 
 
 The entertainment must have been well attended ; for the 
 town had to bear a light burden by comparison with that on 
 other occasions. 
 
 The travelling party occasionally fixed the sum which they 
 demanded for their performance. 
 
 A collection was made, or entrance money paid, as in the 
 case of the Duttons in the year 1593, when 7s. &d. was 
 gathered, and the deficiency, 12s. Qd., was made up by the 
 town. This amount was doubtless much grudged, as the 
 performance began to be odious to a party. 
 
 Some companies of stage-players demanded more than 
 others, as being retainers of noble personages, while others 
 were more humble in their demands, being, as Percy sup- 
 poses, only strollers. The Duttons received at Lyme \l. 
 The players of great men, or " Lordis players " had 10s. 
 given to the company by the Earl of Northumberland in 
 
 D 2 
 
36 SOCIAL HISTORY OP THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES, 
 
 1512.* These were retainers or menial servants of particular 
 noblemen, who protected them in the exercise of their pro- 
 fession. Many occasionally turned strollers. 
 
 Though it is usually believed that no female performers 
 were found, or were allowed to act in the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth, yet it is a fact that there was an exception. ^ We 
 read of the " unchaste, shameless, and unnatural tumbling of 
 the Italian women." f 
 
 They played early in the afternoon. There were penny 
 benches. There was little aid derived from the mise en scene. 
 None of the many adjuncts of the modern country theatre 
 could have been available. The party walked from town to 
 town, and perhaps, as in the metropolis, acted their parts in 
 the inn-yards or in a barn, if the weather proved inclement. 
 
 Besides the penny benches, there were seats for which 
 2d., 3d., and even 6d. were paid in James I.'s time for 
 admission. Tobacco, wine, and beer made play-going ex- 
 pensive. The audience at a play, as at church, smoked. 
 
 The popular drama preceding Shakspeare was low, ten- 
 tative, inartificial, yet amusing. 
 
 All with our early dramatists was of purpose and fore- 
 thought, and they gave to the English language a literature 
 which is a marvel among nations.^ 
 
 The first true English comedy is Ralph Roister Doister, 
 written by Nicholas UdaU, master at Eton, printed at least 
 in 1551. The next is Gammer Gurton's Needle, about 
 1575, composed by John StiU, afterwards Bishop of Bath 
 and Wells. 
 
 Players were licensed by Queen Elizabeth and James I. 
 The licence of James I. to William Shakspeare himself and 
 the players his fellows authorised them " to use and exercise 
 the art and faculty of playing comedies, tragedies, histories, 
 interludes, morals, pastorals, stage- plays and such like." 
 
 A few entries from the archives of Lyme are appended. 
 
 * Regulations of the Household of Algernon Percy, the Earl of North- 
 umberland. Lond. 8vo. 
 
 f See Archaeologia for 1855. 
 I Athenaeum, No. 1432. 
 
PLAYING IN CHURCHES AND CHAPELS. 37 
 
 The poppit players visited the town in 1569, and the 
 Queen's jester received 3s. id. the same year. In 1567 Sir 
 Thomas Neville's and my Lord of Worcester's players had 
 each 2s. 2 d. 
 
 In 1569,— 
 
 Lord Mountjoy's players - - - - 
 
 The Queen's . . - - - 
 
 My Lord of Exeter's . - . - 
 
 In 1577,— 
 
 My Lord of Leicester's players, 17 Oct. - 
 
 Mountjoy's, 13 Dec. - 
 
 Certain players, 20 April - 
 
 Lord Suffolk's players, 6 Sept. - 
 
 In 1589,— 
 
 The Queen's tumblers - . - . 
 
 Queen's players - . . - 
 
 Lord Sherborne's ... 
 
 Lord Essex's - - . . . 
 
 The distance from the metropolis caused some of the man- 
 dates of authority to be tardily obeyed and the doings of 
 more important corporations to be imitated after some in- 
 terval of time. 
 
 We may instance the case of Bonner, Bishop of London, 
 who in the year 1542 (33 Henry VIII.) issued a proclama- 
 tion to the clergy of his diocese prohibiting all manner of 
 common plays, games, or interludes to be played, set forth, 
 or declared within their churches or chapels. 
 
 What a curious scene must Lyme have presented in 1558 ! 
 The Queen's Majesty's players had arrived and proceeded to 
 play their piece in the parish church. The corporation con- 
 tributed is. 5d. We may suppose that money was taken at 
 the doors by some official of the mayor, who ascertained the 
 deficiency to be as above. 
 
 Was the performance on this occasion very offensive to 
 the authorities, or to the town generally ? There is no trace 
 of any expression to that effect. At this date the decided 
 
 D 3 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 5 
 
 8 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 6 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
38 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOTJTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 disapprobation of maay against such performances in the 
 sacred edifice may not have been pronounced in this country 
 town. Probably the players presumed upon their licence 
 from the Queen's iNIajesty, and the mayor and his brethren 
 did not venture to come into collision with them. 
 
 The time was near at hand when many entertained a 
 perfect horror of the profanation of the church fabric. 
 
 Speaking of the minister, Cartwright the Puritan, in allu- 
 sion to the church service, writes, " He posteth it over as fast 
 as he can galloppe ; for eyther he liath two places to serve, 
 or else there are some games to be playde in the afternoonj 
 as lying for the whetstone, hethenishe dauncing for the ring, 
 a beare or a bull to be baited, or else a jackanapes to ride on 
 horsebacke, or an interlude to be plaide ; and if no place 
 else can be gotten, this interlude must be ■playde in the 
 church." * 
 
 There is an entry in the church register of Syston in 
 Leicestershire in 1602 of \2d. paid to Ijord Morley's 
 players, because they should not play in the church. 
 
 AVe learn that at Leyden in 1608 the authorities of the 
 city allowed AV. Pedel, a comedian, to exhibit various 
 beautiful and chaste performances with his body, without 
 using any words, in the church of the BagynhofF, provided 
 he cease during the preaching of God's word, and that the 
 poor orphans there have half the profits.f 
 
 At the present time, in the United States of America, 
 where there is a town of recent growth which has not 
 been able to raise a hall for the purposes of lectures, the 
 church is used for the delivery of such a means towards 
 knowledge.:!: 
 
 In New Zealand travelling parties go to the churches and 
 make them answer the purpose of eastern caravansaries. 
 
 The players continued their perambulations ; but at length 
 their visits were very disagreeable to some of the rulino- 
 
 * Admonition to Parliament, by Thos. Cartwright, a. i>. 1572. 
 ■\ Minutes of tlie Council of Leyden, 18th Nov. 1608. — Notes and 
 Queries, Jan. 29. 1853. 
 
 + Old England and New England, &c., by Alfred Bunn. 
 
INCREASED FEELING AGAINST STAGE-PLATEES. 39 
 
 bodies, who, like the Wickliffite reformers, took part against 
 the stage. 
 
 It was in 1575 that the Lord Mayor and aldermen ex- 
 pelled the players from the City, when the Blackfriars' 
 Theatre was built. 
 
 Provincial municipal bodies began to discountenance po- 
 pular, scenic, and other exhibitions. It was determined at 
 Leicester, in 1582, that no fee or reward should be given by 
 the body towards any bear-wards, bear-baitings, players, plays, 
 interludes, or games, nor any players to be allowed to play 
 at the town-hall. The authorities still hesitated to interfere 
 with those who came with a special licence for dramatic 
 performances, granted by the Queen or the lords of the 
 Privy Council. Though they did not venture to forbid any 
 performance in such a case, they so contrived matters that 
 the injurious effects arising from it should be circumscribed, 
 — they determined that the acting should be witnessed by the 
 mayor and his brethren only. They considered themselves 
 play-proof. 
 
 In 1586 the Mayor of Leicester provided Lord Wor- 
 cester's players, eleven in number, with a dinner as an 
 inducement to proceed without playing. They notwith- 
 standing afterwards asked to play at their inn, and were told 
 " the mayor willed them not to play at this present Friday, 
 for that the time was not convenient." They, however, 
 said they would play, and went through the town with drum 
 and trumpets. They afterwards submitted themselves for 
 their injurious expressions to the mayor, begged him not to 
 write against them to their master, and had permission to 
 play ; so that they told their audience the mayor allowed them 
 to do so, and they were sorry for the words that had passed.* 
 
 The feeling in the west of England against stage-plays 
 ran very high, and terrible stories were circulated against 
 such in order to deter persons from attending the perform- 
 ance. 
 
 * Shakspeare Society's Papers, vol. iv., communicated by Mr. Hal- 
 liwell. 
 
40 SOCIAL HISTORY OP THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 A volume printed in 1585 * has a written account of 
 " certain players of the migratory kind, who were acting at 
 Exeter upon the stage the tragical story of Dr. Faustus the 
 conjuror. As a certain nomber of devils kept every one 
 his circle there, and as Faustus was busie in his magicall 
 invocations, on a sudden they were all dasht (put out, 
 alarmed), every one hearkening other in the eare, for they 
 were all persuaded there was one devell too many amongst 
 them; and so after a little pause desired the people to pardon 
 them, they could go no farther with this matter : the people 
 also understanding the thing as it was, every man hastened 
 to be first out of dores. The players (as I heard it), contrarye 
 to their custom, spending the night in reading and in prayers 
 got them out of the town the next morning." 
 
 Many were the stories fabricated with pious intention to 
 effect what was conceived to be a good object. 
 
 Walter Yonge, Esq., of Colyton, records in 1607, from 
 persons at Lyme, who had come out of France, how at 
 Lyons a terrible thunder-storm had burst upon a theatre, 
 where the representation of the Last Judgment Day was 
 begun to be shown, and had killed the greatest part of the 
 people present. That magistrate's abhorrence of all scenic 
 exhibitions, stage-plays, interludes, masques, mixed dancing, 
 &c., was so great, as to lead him to believe that " they tended 
 to the high provocation of God's wrath." f 
 
 Many of the corporations having adopted the opinions of 
 the Puritan party in the reign of James I., they did not 
 hesitate to lay out their money in order to save their borough 
 from the profanation of a performance. 
 
 15th November, 1621, certain players licensed under the 
 King's Privy Signet arrived at Exeter. Mr. Receiver was 
 ordered to pay them the sum of 40s. as a gratuity, and not 
 to be suffered to play. 
 
 A few examples from Lyme will ftirther illustrate the 
 practice of that day. 
 
 * See Gentleman's Magazine, Sept. 1850. 
 f Diary of W. Yonge, Camden Society. 
 
SUNDAY GAMES AND PLAYS. 41 
 
 *. d. 
 1621. Given to the players not to play here - - 6 8 
 
 1623. Given to John Jones, who had a license to show feats 
 of activity, to depart the town by consent of the company 
 
 (i. e. the corporation) - - - - - 2 
 
 1624. Given to the Lady Elizabeth's players to depart the 
 town without playing - - - - - 5 
 
 1633. Given unto stage-players for sending them out of the 
 town - - " - - - -50 
 
 Intemperate views with, respect to religious opinions are 
 to be expected at this date. Men ran into extremes, and in 
 nothing more so than with respect to stage-plays. 
 
 Ignatius Jourdan, twice the representative of Exeter in 
 Parliament, and who laboured for a bill to punish adultery, 
 had great influence in that city. He prevailed upon Valen- 
 tine Carey to speak to James I. respecting these plays and 
 sports, upon which he entertained a strong opinion. King 
 James at once declared he " would hang the fellow." Carey 
 had much to do to pacify the king, who considered he was 
 interfered with.* 
 
 Archbishop Williams, the Lord Keeper, although supposed 
 to favour the Puritans, incurred, writes Lord Campbell, great 
 scandal with that sect by encouraging stage-plays. He used 
 to have the players down from London to Buckden. The 
 Midsummer Night's Dream was exhibited there on Sunday, 
 27th September, 1631; and some write that on that very day 
 an episcopal ordination was held, so that the play was for the 
 amusement of the young priests. Bishop Hacket asserts 
 that Archbishop Williams did no more in recreating himself 
 with diversions than he had seen Archbishop Bancroft do at 
 Lambeth. King James's Book of Sports, commanding all 
 good Christians and churchmen to play at football and other 
 such games every Sunday afternoon was read during the 
 morning service in every church and chapel in the kingdom. 
 
 A case brought before the Michaelmas sessions at Bridport, 
 in 1630, proves the matured hostility between the Puritan 
 party and any travelling showmen. 
 
 * Communicated by the Rev. Dr. Oliver. 
 
42 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 The complaint made set forth that William Sands the 
 elder, John Sands, and William Sands the younger, and 
 about nine others, wander up and down the country with 
 certain blasphemous shows and sights, which they exercise 
 by way of ■puppet-playing : and are now, as the constables 
 of Beaminster and other inhabitants state, come to that town ; 
 and have set up their shows of puppet playing and feats not 
 only iu the day-time, but late in the night, to the great dis- 
 turbance of the townsmen there. The attraction must have 
 been great, for the complainants state they cannot keep 
 their children and servants in their houses by reason they 
 frequent the said shows and sights late in the night in a dis- 
 orderly manner. 
 
 These travelling show-people commenced their perform- 
 ances in the evening after the agricultural and clothing 
 population had left their work, in which they are imitated 
 by their successors in various lines. 
 
 The preacher of Beaminster, a character distinct from the 
 minister of the parish, who probably had no licence, assailed 
 Sands and his show in the Sunday's sermon. The discourse 
 ended. Sands and two of his company pursued the preacher 
 from the church to his house, entered it, and " there challenged 
 him for his sermon, and gave him threatening speeches."' 
 That this was allowed by the population proves that the 
 great majority favoured the showman. 
 
 The constable reported a brawl between Sands and a 
 townsman ; upon which the court, considering the great 
 dearth of corn and other victuals, and the extremity likely 
 to come ou the poor by reason of the said dearth, and also 
 two several proclamations, by which his jMajesty commands 
 the law to be enforced against such wanderers, ordered Sands 
 to remove on the following jMonday, and to depart out of the 
 county, and if found again in the county to be taken before 
 a magistrate and committed to the next assizes.* 
 
 How the travelling parties fared after the Eestoration has 
 
 * Mr. T. Hearn, " Qui Quondam." 
 
KOYAL LICENCES TO PLATERS. 43 
 
 been treated of by the writer * whose valuable contributions 
 have been already acknowledged. 
 
 "The natural consequence and reaction of the excessive 
 austerity and rigidity that prevailed was manifested in the ex- 
 treme laxity in regard to Sabbath observances, and in the custom- 
 ary use of offensive language, into which the people rushed im- 
 mediately after the Restoration, and the traces of which are not 
 even yet obliterated from national manners ; as also in the eager- 
 ness with which they resorted to the amusements of all kinds 
 which, after having been long forbidden, were now sanctioned 
 and encouraged by official authority and royal example. Recre- 
 ations were promptly provided for the people, and itinerant exhi- 
 bitions of every description were speedily to be found traversing 
 the country, offering the temptations of mirth and novelty. 
 Dorchester of course was not unvisited by the conductors of 
 these undertakings. 
 
 "On the 6th of October, 1660, it is recorded that William 
 Darrant came ' to this towne to shew the dauncing of divers 
 creatures on ropes and dogs, pretending a licence from General 
 Munck.' A copy of the licence is given, purporting to be under 
 the Royal Signet, authorising Darrant to show publicly throughout 
 the realm ' a morin, ape, monkyes, and other foraigne creatures;' 
 and dated ' at our pallace at Westminster y^ 27 day of March, in 
 y'= 13 [12] yeare of our reigne.' 
 
 " After the Restoration rope dancing and tumbling were very 
 favourite amusements amongst all classes of the people. One of 
 the most celebrated of the rope dancers and managers of tumbling 
 companies about this time was Jacob Hall, of whom an account 
 is given in Grainger's Biographical History. He and his com- 
 pany were occasionally engaged ' to express the height of their 
 activity in tumbling and the like' before the sovereign, in the 
 Lord Mayor's pageants in London. 
 
 " A somewhat similar application was made on the 9th of Novem- 
 ber following, when Richard Arris desired leave to show puppet- 
 plays under a licence from the master of the revels, authorising 
 him to ' make shew of a puppet-shew called Patient Grizell, with 
 music and six servants.' This licence is dated on the 15th June, 
 1660. 
 
 * Mr.T.Hearn, the " Qui Quondam '' of the Dorset County Chronicle, 
 from MS. 
 
44 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 " And on tlie 8th February following there was another appli- 
 cation to ' make shew of a shew called Crispin and Crispianus,' 
 under a similar licence. 
 
 " These puppet-shows, — plays performed by means of small 
 wooden figures, of which Punch is now the last lingering repre- 
 sentative, — or, as they were anciently termed, ' motions,' were 
 very favourite spectacles with our ancestors. They are of very 
 early origin, and in the times of the Papacy were exhibited by 
 the priests and monks, and were confined to religious subjects, 
 being nearly allied to the ' mysteries ' and ' pageants,' notices of 
 which so frequently occur, and the history of which is so full of 
 curious interest. During the rule of the Commonwealth they 
 were strictly forbidden, together with all other dramatic repre- 
 sentations and amusements ; but, as is here seen, they sprang 
 again into active existence immediately after the Restoration, 
 under the countenance and authority of the master of the revels, 
 — an ofiice created by Henry VIII., and at this time fiUed by 
 John Herbert, and afterwards bestowed upon Charles Killigrew. 
 Both the touching and sad story of 'the patient Griselda,' and the 
 tale of the two brethren of ' the gentle craft,' were especially 
 favourite ' motions ' with the public. The municipal authorities 
 of Dorchester, however, appear to have sturdily retained much of 
 their accustomed severity of tone, and all these applications were 
 refused ; and in one instance we meet with the following quaint 
 allegation of motive : — 
 
 " 'May 17. 1661. —Richard Pavey of London of St. Giles in 
 the fields coming to town this day to shew a motion of the witches 
 of the north is told that we have noe waste mony for such idle 
 things and is denied to shew here att his perill.' 
 
 " On the 5th of June, 1661, occurs the following notice of one 
 of the ancient mountebanks, a class who became extinct only since 
 the commencement of the present century ; itinerant quacks, 
 who combined the attractions of tumbling and merry-andrewism 
 with the dispensing of medicines, powders, pills, and potions, sure 
 specifics for the cure of tooth-ache, ague, colic, fever, and all the 
 natural iUs, that flesh is heir to : — 
 
 " ' This day Richard Amyas desired Mr. Mayor's licence to sett 
 up a stage to shew feats of activity and to seU druggs under culler 
 of a licence from y^ master of y« reveUs.' " 
 
 The power vested in the hands of magistrates was some- 
 times stretched beyond all bounds. 
 
POPULAR IGNOEANCB ON MARITIME AFFAIES. 
 
 45 
 
 A company of vagrant showmen were taken up by the 
 constables at Lewes in 1694, and conveyed to a ship for the 
 sea-service. 
 
 Shipfof War of the 15th Century. (Harl. MS.) 
 
 Early Shipping and Maritime Affairs. 
 
 Popular ignorance is perhaps displayed upon no subject 
 more than upon that of the state of the early maritime 
 power and resources of our country. Visit our sea-ports in 
 the British Channel, and listen to what the inhabitants delight 
 in telling of the former condition of their trade, the size of 
 the shipping, and, more than all, the foreign ports with which 
 intercourse was maintained. At the words Barbadoes, 
 Guinea, Barbary, Newfoundland, and the Straits it is con- 
 cluded that the interests of the port have declined. This is 
 not surprising, as none but large vessels now trade thither. 
 
46 SOCIAL HISTORT OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 When it is objected that the depth of water was insufficient, 
 we are told the sand has collected; but, under any circum- 
 stances, there was indisputably a brisk foreign trade carried 
 on at many ports where there is none in the present day. 
 The halo of antiquity being thrown around the ships of the 
 Plantagenets and Tudors, they loom large through the mist. 
 
 When were there not vessels on either coast of the British 
 Channel ? Csesar found 220 assembled, high out of the water 
 compared with his own craft, all of oak, sails of prepared 
 skins, anchors fastened to iron chains in part, if not altogether 
 for cables. We may perhaps compare these to modern 
 stout French fishing-luggers. They were gathered from 
 Britain and the Gallic coasts, and could stand a knocking- 
 about. The wicker-boats, talked of as navigated by northern 
 heroes, would have disappeared before a channel off-shore 
 wind during a summer night. Who can gravely assert that 
 our climate has experienced any change ? 
 
 In Bichard I.'s expedition to the Crusade in the year 
 1190-1 there were 13 dromons, 250 ships of the second 
 class, and 53 galleys, accompanied by a vast number of 
 barques and other vessels used as transports. 
 
 The siege of Calais, like a certain recent modern siege, was 
 a great operation. There were 733 ships carrying 14,956 
 mariners, or 20 to each ship. 
 
 We read of Bayonne furnishing 
 Spain " 
 Ireland " 
 Flanders " 
 Guelderland " 
 
 15 sh 
 7 ' 
 1 ' 
 
 14 ' 
 1 ' 
 
 ps 
 
 495 mariners. 
 148 
 
 25 
 133 
 
 24 
 
 
 
 The king had 15 ships 
 
 called " 
 
 h 
 
 is 
 
 own,' 
 
 manned 
 
 by 
 
 419 
 
 manners. 
 
 As to the names of the several classes of vessels there is 
 some confusion. Dromons were so named from their speed. 
 Carracks were large vessels, as were Grand Niefs. What 
 shall we say of busses and barges but that they were inferior 
 in class ? Vissers were flat-bottomed, for the transport of 
 horses. Ballingers were for a light draught of water. 
 
SHIPPING OF THE CHANNEL POETS. 47 
 
 Henry III. had a great ship of 80 tons called the " Queen." 
 John Blanchbouilly had a license to trade with this ship of 
 the royal navy, if we may use such an expression, paying a 
 rent of 50 marks,* 
 
 E-udders were first in use about the reign of Edward III. 
 Fire-pence were the sum of 2d. paid by each vessel when bea- 
 cons were maintained by the Cinque Ports. Fire-beacons 
 were established on the south coast A. D. 1325 from a fear of 
 the French and of Queen Isabella. 
 
 Ships in the fleet of Edward III. (a. D. 1373) were not 
 more than two or three in number that measured 200 tons ; 
 most of them were from 40 to 100 tons each.f 
 
 Our subject lies with the shipping of the ports of the 
 Channel individually and in detail, so that many points upon 
 which error exists may be cleared up. General history 
 wants much aid from the local pioneer : he brings the 
 accurate knowledge the former needs. 
 
 Another source of error should be pointed out, which is 
 a parallel with that of descanting only upon the scenes of 
 grandeur witnessed in royal and lordly halls, entirely over- 
 looking and confounding all the transactions of private 
 life. This is the dwelling upon the shipping of William 
 Cannynge, the famous merchant of Bristol, and that of this 
 city generally. 
 
 Cannynge's Mark. 
 
 Bristol was a very great emporium, that furnishes no just 
 comparison with the majority of our sea-ports. William of 
 Worcester tells us of the ships there in his time, about a. d. 
 1480. William Cannynge, who founded the church of St. 
 Mary Eedcliffe, where his tomb appears, had ten ships built 
 at his expense, which measured 2930 tons. One is said to 
 
 * Sussex Archseol. 
 
 t Weale's Papers on Engineering. 
 
48 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 have been of 900 tons, others of 400 and 500 each. These 
 were marvels, but not most probably of English build. The 
 large ships in use are supposed to have been purchased of 
 the Venetians, Hanseatics and the Genoese.* When John 
 Taverner of Hull built a ship as large as a carrack in the 
 year 1449, no such vessel had been constructed before in 
 England. 
 
 Henry V. had built some dromons, or large ships of war. 
 
 A Ship of War, «.D. 1688. 
 
 at Southampton, as is said, such as the world had never seen 
 before-t 
 
 Besides Cannynge's ships, there were at Bristol the 
 
 Mary Grace 
 Le 
 
 George - 
 Kateryn - 
 Mary Bryd 
 
 Tons. 
 
 - 300 
 
 - 360 
 
 - 200 
 
 - 180 
 
 - 100 
 
 * Anderson's History of Commerce, 
 t Pictorial History of England. 
 
THE TERMS SHIP AND MEKCIIANT. 
 
 49 
 
 Cristofer 
 
 Mary Shernman - 
 
 Leonard - 
 
 Mary of Bristowe 
 
 T<jns. 
 
 90 
 54 
 50 
 
 Thomas Strange and others had some ships likewise. 
 The value of shipping per ton about this date was, 11. lOs. 
 or 2/. 
 
 A small Craft. 
 
 Accurate investigation of the details of borough history 
 has enabled us to attain some definite estimate of the im- 
 
 A trading Vessel. 
 
 portant terms ship and merchant. We now style a three- 
 masted vessel having square sails on each mast a ship ; and 
 
 e 
 
50 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 a trader in an extensive way of business a merchant. In the 
 Tudor reigns every kind of craft was set down under the 
 general term of ship, as every dealer or tradesman was 
 
 A Merchant Ship. 
 
 under that of merchant. This has mislead many. There 
 can be no fair comparison between the ship and merchant of 
 Queen Elizabeth's and her present Majesty's reign. Ship- 
 ping and trading community, or inhabitants that were engaged 
 in trade, and some of these in a very small way, would be 
 the modern equivalents. 
 
 This point is dwelt upon, as much of the erroneous account 
 about former greatness, as sea-ports and places of trade, has 
 arisen from a misconception of these terms. Let these be 
 wrongly interpreted, then accounts of sea-port towns under 
 the Tudor sovereigns, their " ships " and " many rich mer- 
 chants," sound very grandly. Nineteen ships and fifty-four 
 merchants at Lyme, a. d. 1578, are an example of this use 
 of words. Every detail is given in " an assessment towards 
 the charge of the Q(ueen's) ship" at ^d. in the pound.* 
 This was the odious grievance known as ship-money. 
 
 " The ships throughout the realm as they were found in 
 
 * Archives of Lyme Reo-is. 
 
TOPMEN AND TONNAGE. 51 
 
 1568 by the vice-admirals of the counties, and certified to 
 the Lord Admiral and Lords of the Council," is the subject 
 of a MS.* 
 
 How valuable are these old returns in all their formality 
 towards the undeceiving us as to early naval grandeur. 
 
 The "sayles of topemen," referred to at this period are 
 sail of ships carrying topmen, that is cross-bowmen and 
 engineers, who were placed in the battlemented tops, where 
 their services were very marked in battle. 
 
 It is interesting to compare the returns. 
 
 Topmen. 
 
 Poole, 2 ships of 100 tons a-piece - - 10 
 
 Lyme, i " " " 12 
 
 Hampton Water and Portsmouth - - 10 
 
 Plymouth, 8 ships from 400'to 110 tons - - - 20 
 
 Dartmouth, 4 " 400 to 100 " - - 20 
 
 Falmouth - - - - - - 4 
 
 Weymouth - - - - - 8 
 
 Bridgwater ... - 6 
 
 Salcombe - - - - 6 
 
 Lynn, in Norfolk, 2 hulks of 100 tons a-piece - - 8 
 
 Martin Frobisher sailed 8th June, 1567, to discover the 
 north-west passage, with two barques of 25 tons each. 
 
 Ships of Lyme Regis, a. d. 1578, from an Assessment in the 
 Archives. 
 
 Tons. Tons. 
 
 The Golden Ryall 
 
 - 110 
 
 Brought fi 
 
 Drward 
 
 - 564 
 
 Jonas 
 
 - 60 
 
 The Demon 
 
 - 
 
 - 30 
 
 Swallow 
 
 - 60 
 
 Gallant 
 
 - 
 
 - 27 
 
 Dove 
 
 - 58 
 
 Lion - 
 
 - 
 
 - 22 
 
 Flower de Luce 
 
 - 60 
 
 Edward 
 
 - 
 
 - 18 
 
 Bravo 
 
 - 32 
 
 John Pley 
 
 - 
 
 16 
 
 Sweepstake - 
 
 56 
 
 Elizabeth 
 
 
 12 
 
 Minion 
 
 48 
 
 Mayflower 
 
 
 14 
 
 Angel 
 
 - 40 
 
 Robert 
 
 - 
 
 12 
 
 Primrose 
 
 - 40 
 
 John of Lulford 
 
 ~ 8 
 
 Carry forward - 564 Ships 19, tons 724 
 
 * Harleian MS. 168—249. 
 E 2 
 
52 SOCIAL HISTORY OP THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 The ships and ballingers of Poole were about this date 
 (1574) twenty in number. 
 
 Tn the year 1575 there were only 135 ships in England 
 above 100 tons; and only 656 vessels between 40 and 100 
 tons. 
 
 The navy contained twenty-three ships, most of which 
 should properly be called vessels. 
 
 Sir Francis Drake had sailed the year before with five 
 vessels, the largest not being of 100 tons, for the circum- 
 navigation of the globe. Sir Humphry Gilbert explored 
 the coast of America in the " Squirrel " of 10 tons. 
 
 It was the small size of the craft navigated by the earliest 
 and truly heroic discoverers that caused storms to be deemed 
 so formidable. Early accounts of storms that drove the ships 
 out of their course, and threatened all with loss of life, &c., 
 have given rise to an opinion that seas were more tem- 
 pestuous in former centuries than they now are. The solu- 
 tion of such an inquiry is to be sought for in the small size 
 of the vessels employed. 
 
 Maritime matters are somewhat different to what obtained 
 when the " Mary Rose " sunk in 1545, carried her stone 
 shot. Our armaments proudly rule, and every craftsman is 
 called into requisition to furnish something to that extreme 
 aggregation of human industry — a modern ship, except a 
 stonemason. 
 
 Much is to be learnt from A Remembrance for Sir 
 Francis Walsingham for the Town of Lyme Regis, A. D. 
 1586. 
 
 " The number of ships, masters, and mariners belonging to 
 and using the pier and town there. 
 
 " There are belonging to the said pier and kept going in 
 voyages in the trade of merchandise by the merchants of the 
 town and country thereabout, 23 barques and pinnaces. 
 
 " There is belonging and dwelling in the town there, of 
 able and skilful mariners, besides masters of ships able to take 
 charge, 108 mariners. 
 
 "There are able masters to take charge of ships, 18 masters. 
 
 " There are dwelling within four miles of the said town of 
 
INCREASE OF SEAMEN IN ENGLAND. 
 
 53 
 
 Lyme, which are kept going in voyages by the shipping of 
 Lyme, 80 mariners. 
 
 " So there is maintained and kept going in voyages by the 
 shipping there, within the town and without, 206 mariners. " * 
 
 Besides the information to be derived from this document 
 in other respects, the data which it affords to estimate the 
 value and importance of Lyme in relation to the country at 
 large, are very valuable. 
 
 In Bree's work it appears that the number of ships had 
 declined since the reign of Edward III. He gives the 
 number of ships, as they were then styled, in 1589. 
 
 Above 100 tons. 
 
 Under 100 and 
 above 80. 
 
 Under 80. 
 
 Dorset 
 Devon 
 London 
 
 7 
 62 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 23 
 
 All England 
 
 51 
 109 
 
 44 
 180 
 
 In Thompson's Illustrations of the History of England 
 the seamen of this country, in 1582, were computed at 
 14,295, and the vessels at 1232, only 217 being above 80 
 tons. Then it appears that about this time Lyme had a 
 53rd part of the number of shipping of all England, and with 
 Charmouth, and a few parishes round, a 69th part of the 
 seamen. Even London, that present mighty mart, had not 
 six times as many vessels ! Previous to 1613 there were not 
 more than 10 vessels of 200 tons belonging to the port of 
 London. By the year 1640 the number of seamen in 
 England was tripled; and in 1831 England and Scotland 
 had 22,000 merchant vessels. 
 
 In 1591 a survey of the vessels belonging to Poole was 
 taken by order of the queen, which furnishes additional con- 
 firmation of the smallness of the ships, f These would now 
 be set down as small vessels. Only three very small craft, 
 of the whole shipping of the only port of Dorsetshire, 
 
 * Harleian MS. vol. 368. fol. 124. 
 f Sydenham's History of Poole. 
 E 3 
 
54 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEKN COUNTIES. 
 
 Poole, were unarmed. A whole volume could contain 
 nothing more conclusive as to the insecurity of the seas. 
 
 The Ships of Poole a. d. 1591, with the Tonnage and the 
 Ordnance.* 
 
 Name. 
 
 Tonnage. 
 
 Fowler. 
 
 Sakpr. 
 
 Mynion. 
 
 Falcon. 
 
 • 
 The Castle of Comfort 
 
 70 
 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 Grace of God 
 
 50 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 St.tts BonaTentor - 
 
 60 
 
 1 
 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 S^a Flower 
 
 50 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 Sea Bright 
 
 60 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 Angel - 
 
 55 
 
 2 
 
 
 - 
 
 2 
 
 Lion 
 
 60 
 
 - 
 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 Eagle - 
 
 50 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 3 
 
 Edward 
 
 40 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 William and John 
 
 45 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 Primrose 
 
 30 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 May Flower . . - 
 
 30 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 Barque Lambert - 
 
 24 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 Margaret of ■ 
 
 26 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 Marygold 
 
 20 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 1 
 
 Hopewell 
 
 18 
 
 
 
 
 
 {Defaced) - 
 
 24 
 
 
 
 
 
 Carvel - 
 
 25 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 Peter 
 
 14 
 
 
 
 
 
 Sithe 
 
 25 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 New Barque 
 
 40 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 4 
 
 816 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 14 
 
 46 
 
 Insecurity may not have been the sole cause why so many 
 pieces of ordnance were mounted in the small vessels of 
 Poole. The pieces borne by each craft are carefully noted, 
 and the reasons are assigned why this was done, and why a 
 similar survey of other ports would be beneficial. There 
 was a custom of selling good and serviceable ships to foreign 
 countries, and also ordnance ; so that ships set out upon a 
 voyage with ten or twenty pieces of ordnance, and returned 
 with only half that number, the others having been sold to 
 foreigners ; by which our enemies were strengthened. f 
 
 A place where small vessels, or luggers, were to be found 
 in any number, whether for trade or fishing, was dignified 
 in Tudor reigns with terms that are apt to mislead, and which 
 
 Sydenham's History of Poole. 
 
 t Ibid. 
 
PREPARATIONS TO OPPOSE SPANISH AEMADA. 56 
 
 The Great Harry. 
 
 have misled. In Borde's Book of Knowledge, publislied 
 about 1542, among the " more noble havens " is Brighton, a 
 fishing town only, and other inconsiderable sea-ports. A 
 lugger of seventeen tons is not in the present day classed as 
 a vessel, but as small craft. At certain seasons such craft 
 are hauled up upon the beach, and at great labour, which has 
 to be repeated in the launching. This might take place 
 anywhere, but the presence of these craft does not establish 
 a harbour. 
 
 The year 1588 brought the exciting news of the coming 
 of the Spanish Armada. In April, General Sir John Norris, 
 Sir Henry Ashley, Kt., and George Trenchard, Esq., ac- 
 companied by other justices, rode from Weymouth to Lyme, 
 to view and make a report- — enter the view as it was termed 
 — of the state of the sea-coast. As this worshipful party 
 proceeded they called to consult with them the most skilful 
 seamen, both for information, and generally respecting the 
 Armada and the nature of the bays along the coast, as to 
 
 E 4 
 
56 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 A Galley, a. d. 1688. 
 
 the facilities they might afford for the landing of the enemy's 
 forces. 
 
 Supper and wine were furnished at Lyme " to my Lord 
 Norris, the lieutenant and the rest of the company, 1 9 April, 
 1588, at a cost to the town of 4Z. 6*. 4rf." The mayor and 
 his brethren partook of the repast. It was a stirring occasion. 
 English loyalty was called forth in an unexampled degree. 
 Should we muse upon the alarm of the time, let us not 
 forget an interesting fact, that General Sir John Norris 
 used to say, he wondered he could see no man in the king- 
 dom afraid but himself. Viscount Wimbledon, who relates 
 this anecdote on a subsequent breaking out of war, makes 
 this reflection, " the danger of all is, that a people not used 
 to a war believeth that no enemy dare venture upon them ; 
 which may make them neglect it the more, for that their 
 ignorance doth blind them." * We cannot help concluding 
 that Sir John Norris's experience of the valiant overmuch, 
 was at table over the pottle of sack. The beacons and pre- 
 parations must have greatly alarmed the country. 
 
 Sir John Norris, taking a comprehensive military survey 
 of the country, did not overlook the great earthworks near 
 the borders of Dorset, Somerset, and Devon. Had the 
 worthy general taken a different view, many of our fine 
 
 * Park's ed. of Koble Authors, vol. ii. p. 309. 
 
PREPARATIONS TO OPPOSE SPANISH ARMADA. 57 
 
 British remains, afterwards occupied by the Romans, might 
 have been so altered as to have lost their interest. As it 
 happened, the following conclusion was adopted : " Old 
 intrenched camps in the country could be strengthened, but 
 to little purpose, as they are not placed in situations to stop 
 an enemy." * Fancy a Maiden Castle, a Pilsdon Hill, or a 
 Hembury Fort surrounded by Spanish chivalry and held by 
 our county muster men ! 
 
 Sixty men were ordered at Blanford to be sent to Lyme 
 by Mr. Strangways, furnished, " twenty shot, twenty bows, 
 the rest bylles.'' By shot we are to understand men provided 
 with fire-arms. In the same MS. there is an order for 
 " shott to be horsed to watch the coast." Thus armed, riding 
 officers were anticipated in the sixteenth century.f These 
 hoblers or light horsemen were to fire the beacons, which had 
 been erected in profusion upon the summits of the coast- 
 hills. Understanding men were to be appointed to this 
 service ; for on previous occasions men of another stamp had 
 fired them when there was no enemy, and had alarmed the 
 country without occasion ! 
 
 On the approach of the enemy the whole force was, 
 according to Sir John Norris's advice, to assemble at Wey- 
 mouth, except such as was appointed for the guard of par- 
 ticular places. 
 
 The whole of the English navy at the time of the ever- 
 memorable Spanish Armada in 1588 consisted of only 
 twenty-three ships, some of which would now be called 
 vessels. 
 
 Tons. 11 Tons. 
 
 There was 1 of -1000 There was 1 of- 350 
 
 2 - - 900 
 2 800 
 
 2 600 
 
 2 - - 500 
 
 2 - - 400 
 
 11 In all 23 
 
 * Sir John Norris, his Account of the State of Dorsetshire, its Forti- 
 fications, &c., anno 1588. Lausdown MSS. 113. No. 37. 
 t Harleian MS. 3324. No. 6. 
 
 1 
 
 
 330 
 
 1 
 
 - 
 
 300 
 
 1 
 
 - 
 
 200 
 
 8 
 
 - from 
 
 120 
 
 
 
 to 
 
 50 
 
58 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 The largest ship carried only 40 guns. Before the end of 
 Queen Elizabeth's reign the ships of the navy numbered 
 only forty-two. 
 
 Contrast our shipping with that of the great Italian 
 maritime repubKc in her flourishing condition : — 
 
 Venice had 3000 vessels ; 
 17,000 seamen ; 
 
 300 ships, carrying 8000 seamen ; 
 45 galleys, 250 men each.* 
 
 The hiring an auxiliary force to join the Eoyal Navy, the 
 pay and authentic information will prove interesting. It 
 is amusing to learn the smallness of the tonnage. 
 
 Among the merchant craft, or coasters that formed part of 
 the gallant fleets that served under the Lord Admiral and 
 the Lord Henry Seymour, on the seas against the Spanish 
 forces, collected 13th December, 1588 f , were — 
 
 Tons. Master. Men. 
 
 60 The Revenge of Lyme - - Richard Bedscodge, 30. 
 
 90 Jacob .... 40. 
 
 60 Thomas Bonadventure - - - 30. 
 
 Among those vessels with Sir Francis Drake were — 
 
 Tons. Master. Men. 
 
 60 The Elizabeth Drake - - Thomas Seelye, 30. 
 
 140 Bean - . _ John Yonge, Gent. 60. 
 
 This Thomas Seelye was probably a relative, if not the 
 father of the gallant man Thomay Ceely, who as governor 
 defended Lyme Regis in 1644. John Yonge was a gallant 
 gentleman of a good family, whose two mansions were in 
 Colyton and Axminster. 
 
 With the Lord Admiral | were — 
 
 15 ships, from 800 to 600 tons. 
 27 " 400 to 20 " 
 
 With Sir Francis Drake — 
 
 33 ships, from 400 to 30 tons. 
 
 * Libel of English Policy. Macpherson, Pictorial Hist, of England, 
 t Harleian MS. 168. 
 
VICTUALLING, ETC. OP SHIPS. 59 
 
 AA'ey mouth sent — 
 
 
 Tons. 
 
 
 Galleon 
 
 - 100 
 
 
 Catherine 
 
 - 60 
 
 
 Heath Hen 
 
 - 60 
 
 
 Golden Lion, or the Eoyal 
 
 120 1 
 
 
 Sutton, a bark 
 
 70 
 
 • volunteered. 
 
 Expedition 
 
 - 70j 
 
 
 The cost of employing merchant shipping was as follows : 
 the charge, at per ton per week, was 6d. victual per day, each 
 man 4d. 
 
 € 
 The Revenge of Lyme, 2 months' wages for 30 men, 
 
 Jacob " 2 " 50 
 
 Tonnage of the two ships, being 160 tons 
 
 Victualling " 2 months 
 
 Thomas Bonaventure of Lyme, 30 men 6 weeks. 
 One month's victual - - 
 
 Tonnage of the same, 60 tons 
 
 ? 
 
 42 
 
 - 
 
 70 
 
 
 32 
 
 - 
 
 112 
 
 'J 
 
 31 
 
 - 
 
 21 
 
 - 
 
 9 
 
 ^317 
 
 £ 
 
 s. d. 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 10 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 5 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 14 Oj 
 
 Pay of each — 
 
 Lieutenant, per mensem 
 
 Naval surgeon 
 
 Pilot - - - - 
 
 Trumpeter - - 
 
 Halberdier 
 
 A sailor - - 
 
 Thus have many particulars respecting the approach of 
 the Spanish Armada been presented to those who can 
 estimate the excitement of that day. 
 
 At this heroic period our annals bear mention of men who 
 were a compound of many valuable qualities. Ofl&cers at 
 sea in the naval service of their country directing mercantile 
 adventures in undiscovered regions with great ability and 
 profound skill in seamanship ; acute merchants who could 
 command their own vessels against the common enemy, and 
 engage the foe when met with. These duties are now 
 
60 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 separated ; and most persons could not venture out of their 
 line, the naval officer to conduct a mercantile expedition ; 
 the merchant to take the command of his own ship at sea 
 and fight her too ! It was not so in the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth. 
 
 To exhibit the class of men that made the reign of Eliza- 
 beth so justly famous, let us consider the individual whose 
 martial conduct has been already alluded to. 
 
 John Yonge, Gent, figured as a man of mind, of courage 
 as a merchant and as a warrior. This ancestor of a line 
 of baronets was a merchant who resided in his mansion 
 in Axminster, and that in Colyton, south-east Devon. He 
 gallantly joined his country's armament in the " Bear " of 
 140 tons and 60 men. He presented a Discourse for a 
 Bancke of Money, &c. to Queen Elizabeth, and was a lead- 
 ing merchant in the first regular trade to Africa, being 
 associated with several others in a patent granted by that 
 queen, 3rd May, 1588, for a trade to the Bivers Senegal and 
 Gambia. In one of the old Cobb account books is mentioned 
 the sailing of the " Bark Yonge for Barbary." Much of 
 the trade was probably carried on from Lyme. Arms were 
 granted to John Yonge in 1583. The Massachusetts Bay 
 Company commenced with certain grants of land made by 
 the council for New England to six gentlemen of Dorset- 
 shire ; Sir Henry KoseweU, Sir John Yonge, Thomas 
 Southcoat, John Humphrey, John Endicott, and Samuel 
 Whetcomb. The settlers were not separatists from the 
 church. Some of the merchant adventurers, first known by 
 their title of the brotherhood or fraternity or guild of St. 
 Thomas k Becket, resided at Lyme, and vessels traded to the 
 Senegal and Gambia. 
 
 Some of these incidents are adduced to furnish proof how 
 erroneously these facts have been received by many of those 
 who have chanced to peruse them. Foreign voyages, 
 foreign trade, and shipping have been interpreted to mean 
 what these matters do in the present century. Large ships, 
 and consequently ports with adequate depth of water, were 
 supposed to have been available. Such was not the case. 
 
MARITIME AFFAIRS DURING THE STUART ERA. 61 
 
 The men who made these foreign voyages in small craft 
 were venturesome, and partook of the excitement of their age 
 caused by the great discoveries of new lands. There are 
 bold spirits who would now-a-day not shrink from any 
 similar voyages ; but the pecuniary loss would be great and 
 certain. These early adventurers reaped enormous profits, 
 which are no longer to be earned. 
 
 Maritime matters were not developed otherwise than by a 
 slow process. The over-timid, the slow to alter their course 
 a jot from the beaten track, anticipated evils as likely to 
 spring from every change. The history of expected evils 
 that were to arise out of improvements would be a striking 
 one. 
 
 Henry VIII. founded the Trinity House for the ordering 
 of beacons, lighthouses, buoys, &g. These were, however, 
 sparingly used. Dungenness Lighthouse was built in the 
 reign of James I. One Reading took out a patent for light- 
 houses, which drew attention to these safeguards, about the 
 year 1679. We may be struck with the reception of a plan 
 for the extension of these night-guides that assure the doubt- 
 ing seafaring mariner. The merchants of Liverpool we 
 know, and doubtless those of other ports, judged lighthouses 
 to be likely to prove of no benefit to our mariners, but a 
 hurt rather. These novelties, it was believed, would expose 
 mariners to more danger if they trust to them, and, besides 
 this, prove a very great and unnecessary burden and charge 
 to them. 
 
 The Diary of Walter Yonge, M. P., contains many entries 
 exemplifying the wretched state of the navy in the reign of 
 Charles I. There were great complaints about the bad, 
 even the stinking victuals, and the riotous visits of sailors, 
 in parties of 250, to the house of the Duke of Buckingham 
 to demand their pay, which course was generally successful. 
 It must be confessed that such a party of duns was formid- 
 able ; and, moreover, the London apprentices were expected 
 from time to time to be about to join these ill-used men, 
 who had been obliged to journey far away from their proper 
 element, and clamour in order to obtain their due. Sailors 
 
62 SOCIAL HISTOEY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 were sometimes necessitated to part with their tickets for 
 their pay at fort}^ per cent, discount. 
 
 Could the old seamen have viewed our crews seated upon a 
 spar, placed for the purpose, forty at a time, having their 
 pigtails dressed each by the man behind him, they might 
 have formed an unfavourable opinion of their habits. 
 
 A proclamation, sent out in 1674, prohibits merchant 
 vessels from using the Union Jack, so that they could not 
 be distinguished from men-of-war. 
 
 Barges were used till 1780 for keeping merchandise 
 afloat, that could not be landed for want of room, when the 
 Brunswick Dock at Blackwall was constructed. 
 
 Is the Royal Navy to furnish an exception to the progress 
 of universal improvement ? Has not every observer who 
 has the slightest opportunity remarked a surprising moral 
 change in the right direction in that service ? 
 
 The Royal Navy accounts itself a profession from the reign 
 of Henry VII. ; but its highest honours have only been 
 realised of late years, since ships have belonged to the crown 
 and have been exclusively commanded by naval officers and 
 not by soldiers. The great improvement consists in the 
 dying out of the Trunnion school, who made oaths to appear 
 to be necessary accompaniments of exertion and operations 
 on sea water. Cruel and unjust floggings and treatment 
 came to be thought indispensable if discipline was to be pre- 
 served. Ships are now maintained in the finest order, and 
 the crews are treated as human beings and subjected to a 
 reasoning discipline, having their duties which must be per- 
 formed, and their rights which are engaged to be preserved, 
 and which are ensured to the smallest particular. Punish- 
 ments are now for the offender, and are a safeguard to the 
 many steady men who delight in order. 
 
 Officers of the Royal Navy leave all trafficking at foreign 
 ports in any kind of goods to the merchant or trader. It is 
 useless to offer to officers boxes of watches got up for the 
 foreign market. One port may be preferable to another 
 from the greater safety of its anchorage, but not because the 
 captain and officers can get rid of their several adventures. 
 
SLAVE TEADE. HAVENS. 63 
 
 A captain of a frigate within a few years has been known 
 to purchase slaves in the West India market, have them 
 entered as able seamen, compel the artificers to teach them a 
 trade ; so that when the ship returned each was sold at a high 
 rate as a valuable piece of property. The worst, however, 
 has to be told. Upon sailing from Portsmouth, some of the 
 best men were sent away upon duty in a ship's boat, in order 
 that they might be returned " run," by which they lost pay 
 and clothes, but made room for the negroes lately kidnapped, 
 who were entered, though they did no work for the ship, as 
 able seamen ! We have all heard of a naval officer who had 
 his pocket picked at a Westminster election, and who openly 
 professed his vow, which he rigidly performed, of flogging 
 every Londoner that joined his ship for this act. This, it is 
 said, was no idle vow ! 
 
 The croakings about effeminacy and decline of naval ex- 
 cellence have proved vain. The doings of our naval force, 
 abroad and on shore, in this war with Russia, have realised 
 all that could be asked for in discipline, daring, and endurance. 
 
 When the havens of our coasts were few in number they 
 were viewed with a feeling approaching to veneration. This 
 is not surprising. In many parts a friendly haven was " a 
 succour for shiplets" caught by a storm against certain 
 destruction had no port existed. 
 
 The construction of havens was really a work of Christian 
 mercy, for they saved life where human means had in great 
 storms proved unavailing. The consideration about the 
 preservation of property and their utility were left out of 
 the question, the preservation of the lives of the poor 
 mariners was alone considered. This prompted bishops to 
 stimulate congregations to contribute to the construction of 
 fresh havens and the repair of existing works as a Christian 
 duty; and briefs were issued and carried about England 
 upon the score of general beneficence and humanity towards 
 the tempest-tost mariner. 
 
 An example of one of the early briefs is here furnished. 
 It was granted by King Henry VIII. for the collecting 
 money for the Cobb, 23rd June, 1545. 
 
64 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 " To all true Cristen people to whom the present wrighting 
 shall come to see, rede, or here, we John Tanner al Mopaige * 
 mayor of the town of Lyme Regis, in the county of Dorset, and 
 the burgesses of the same, sendeth greeting in our Lord God 
 everlasting. And whereas upon sute made by us, the forsayd 
 mayor and burgesses unto the Kings most JBoyal Majesty, for 
 succour and suifultation of the intollerable charge that all the 
 inhabitants of the said town of Lyme dailie doth sustain and be 
 at in defending the violent tempestuos flowing and reflowing of 
 the mayne see upon the said town and port there, in such wise 
 that the inhabitants of the same be not of theymselves hable to 
 do, rnless the charatable devotion of good and well disposed people 
 be thereunto extended. The hynges grace of his bountiful good- 
 nes, graciously considering the occasion of our pore sute and sup- 
 plicacion, moved in pitie, zeal, and heartie affection towards the 
 relieving and comforting of us, his poore subjects, in our great ne- 
 cessitie, hath graunted unto us his gracious licence under the great 
 scale for the terme of one yere, to send into divers shires of this 
 his reyelme of England, our lawfuU proctoures and messengers to 
 collect and gather the devocion of well disposed people towards 
 the socouring and helping of us in our great and intolerable 
 charge. Know ye that we have appointed Henry Drake and 
 Nicholas Somer, of South Brent, to erogate and distribute," &c. 
 
 The tempest-tost mariner in Tudor and earlier reigns had 
 no friendly shore upon which he might save his cargo in case 
 he lost his ship. The shipwreck season was the coast season 
 of harvest to the inhabitants of those parts. The mariner's 
 misfortune was their occasion of plunder and profit. A bad 
 season to the wrecker was one when the tranquil sea had 
 delivered over less than the wonted share of spoil. The sea- 
 coast pirates only plundered the unfortunate ; and no one 
 doubted his title to everything that he could lay hands 
 upon in the general scramble. The dead bodies often lay 
 neglected while wine was being drunk and large packages 
 rifled. 
 
 False pilots and lights belong to old times. By one of the 
 laws of Oleron the captain who discovered the treachery of 
 
 * This worthy had two names, like many others about this time, 
 f Archives of Lyme. 
 
PEBIGHTAGE MARINE SUPERSTITION. 65 
 
 a pilot might take him to the lee side of the ship and de- 
 capitate him. Such a law implies that the crime was well 
 developed and practised. 
 
 How is the length of time spent in voyages at this period 
 to be considered in reference to our knowledge of the time 
 required to perform the same, whether more or less distant? 
 how could the owners of vessels make any profit when 
 such intervals of time elapsed between the going and return- 
 ing? add to this the greater comparative cost of building 
 and rigging each craft ; and more than all the smallness of 
 the tonnage. The answer lies in the great per-centage 
 returned from vessels upon their value. This appears almost , 
 incredible in the history of early voyages to the East ; but 
 the freight per ton on our coasts was enormous. In 1616 the 
 price of freight from Guernsey to Lyme was no less than 55s. 
 per ton. In 1852 the same would be not more than about 5s. ; 
 or, considering the relative value of money, one-sixteenth 
 only of what it was. Hence we have an insight into the 
 high price of many articles, and consequently the smallness 
 of their general consumption throughout the whole breadth 
 of the land. 
 
 Many small vessels were probably laid up during the 
 winter season, and those afloat were not rashly exposed 1o 
 danger. The little communication between Jersey and this 
 country may be learnt from the following anecdote : — 
 
 Sir Amias Poulett, then governor of Jersey, wrote to the 
 Lord Chamberlain in 1576 (March 19th), stating that the 
 partridges, the red-legged kind, which he wanted, had been 
 procured ; but that his servant had lain by the water's side 
 for ten weeks without being able to pass. Sir Amias sent 
 two dozen partridges at this time to the Lord Admiral and 
 to the Earl of Leicester.* 
 
 Early times abounded with superstition, and sailors have 
 had ascribed to them that they possess this weakness in more 
 than ordinary degree. 
 
 Among the great naval officers of Elizabeth's reign must 
 be ranked Sir George Summers, the discoverer of the 
 
 * MS. at Hinton House. 
 F 
 
66 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEBN COUNTIES. 
 
 Bermudas, often caUed the Summers Islands from that 
 circumstance. Here is a representation given of what the 
 descendants of Sir George Summers call the "Summers 
 
 The Sammers Magnet, or Loadstone, 
 
 magnet, or loadstone." It is in the possession of Peter 
 Franklin Bellamy, Esq., surgeon, second son of Dr. Bellamy 
 of Plymouth. These gentlemen say the tradition in the 
 family is that the ancient admiral before going to sea used 
 to touch his needle with it. The stone is dark-coloured, the 
 precise geological formation doubtful. The curious stone 
 with armature of iron was probably a talisman. A naval 
 historian lately lost to us has thrown light upon the subject 
 of a compass. 
 
 " The loadstone was termed in Edward IIL's reign the ' sail- 
 stone ' or ' adamante,' and the compass itself 'sailing needles and 
 dial.' In 1345 a ' sailing -pier ' or stone was supplied to the 
 'Plenty ' of Hull ; and in June, 1338, ' two sailing needles and a 
 dial ' formed part of the stores of the barge ' Mary ' of the Tower. 
 But the most remarkable entries are in the accounts of the clerk 
 of the king's ship the ' George' in 1345. After stating that he 
 had purchased, at Sluys in Flanders, sixteen ' horologies, ' pro- 
 bably hour-glasses, twelve of which cost 9s., and paid for repair- 
 ing ' deverse instruments pertaining to a ship,' it is said, that 
 he had spent six shillings for ' twelve stones called adamants, or 
 sail-stones.' Chaucer mentions a ' compass,' but it is doubtful 
 whether he meant a mariner's compass, — 
 
 ' Round was the shape in manere of a compas, 
 Ful of degrees the hight of sixty pas.' 
 
 " He says elsewhere that vessels are steered at night by 
 t e pole-star : — 
 
NAVAL EXPEDITIONS PIRATES. 67 
 
 ' For they were clean in despeyr, because they myghte not se 
 The loder, whereby these shipmen ther cours take eche one.'"* 
 
 To elucidate the hardship of ship-money, it is here added, 
 that in the expedition to Cadiz in 1596-7, — 
 
 " Weymouth, Lyme and all other the ports of Dorset were to fur- 
 nish 2 ships. 
 Plymouth 2 and Dartmouth 2 ships.'' 
 
 Soldiers must have suffered great inconvenience on board 
 ship from overcrowding. The " Black Lion " of Lyme, a 
 vessel of not more than 110 tons, carried 20 mariners and 
 100 soldiers.t 
 
 Such was the beginning of our naval greatness : its 
 growth was not of a day. We can afford to be amused at 
 the small size of the craft, for our ships are now vast. The 
 military armament cannot appear altogether contemptible, 
 for on board were real men of valour. What a martial, 
 patriotic spirit led John Yonge, Bart, (elsewhere men- 
 tioned), and Thomas Seelye to sail against the Armada ! 
 
 The State of our South-western Coasts when infested with 
 Pirates, early Naval Expeditions, Warfare waged by 
 some of our Seaports against each other, S^c. 
 
 ^Qi i,Eivoi, tLveq tare.; irodev wXeld^ vypa KiXevda; 
 "H Ti Kara Trpij^iv, rj [la^iSiWQ aXaXriffde, 
 OTct re \r)taTrjpee virtlp aXa ; toL y' akoiovrai 
 Sfuj^as irapdificvoi, KaKov liWoSaTroTtn (pipovTCQ. 
 
 Od. Y. 71. 
 
 " And whence your race ? on what adventure, say, 
 Thus far you wander through the watery way ? 
 Eelate, if business, or the thirst of gain, 
 Engage your journey o'er the pathless main ; 
 Where savage pirates seek, through seas unknown, 
 The lives of others, venturous of their own." 
 
 Pope's Homer's Odyssey, 
 
 * Sir N. H. Nicolas, History of the Royal Navy, vol. ii. 
 t HarleianMS. 253. p.51. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 SOCIAL HISTORY Or THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 '\'\"e are not about to picture Greek pirates in deep bays 
 amidst foaming rocks stealthily returning to their hiding- 
 place after having plundered some defenceless and, perhaps, 
 crippled merchant vessel ; much less are our pages devoted 
 to what passed in very remote times — those by general con- 
 sent treated of as dark or fabulous, with names t® which no 
 biographer has devoted himself. The scene of our acted 
 drama is the south-western coast of England, the Bristol 
 Channel, and well-known localities. The epoch is hardly 
 more remote than two centuries ; the parties who figure are 
 honest worthies, members of families, whose descendants 
 still live on in our western parts ; and the marauders, if not 
 all of them intimately known, earned a bad name in their 
 day and are here treated of not as myths, but as realities 
 substantially placed with due reference to time and space 
 without any touch of romance. 
 
 The subject demands a full exposition of details of names 
 of persons and places. "Without this who could credit the 
 narrative of doings on the coasts of our western counties 
 herein contained? 
 
 The pirates and rovers we treat of will be shown not to 
 have been stealthy intruders into the Channel, withdrawing as 
 furtively as they came, but bold cruisers, requiring the power 
 of the supreme government to put them down. Sea robbers 
 were masters of the Channel or narrow seas at times in the 
 reigns of Mary, Elizabeth, James I. and Charles I. At a 
 period of greatness in Roman history much the same state of 
 things occurred. Greatness and absolute dominion ashore 
 had not procured for that people the mastery at sea. The 
 evil being insupportable, the cure was entrusted to Pompey, 
 who gave to the Romans what they had not enjoyed before, 
 the uninterrupted possession of the j\Iediterranean. 
 
 According to Thucydides, Minos, who began to reign a. C. 
 1431, was the most ancient of those who acquired a navy. 
 This early conqueror and ruler of the Cyclades, the islands 
 of the Archipelago, found that pirates interfered with the 
 collecting of his revenues. 
 
 The great historian quoted above asserts that the Grecians 
 
PIKATES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN. 69 
 
 in old time, and those of the barbarians who lived on the con- 
 tinent, and all those who inhabited islands, so soon as they 
 were accustomed to cross over to one another in ships, and 
 so became sea-faring people, turned to piracy under the 
 conduct of their most powerful men with a view both to their 
 own gain and to maintenance for the needy ; and falling 
 upon towns that were unfortified they rifled them, and made 
 most of their livelihood by this means, as this employment 
 did not involve any disgrace, but rather brought with it even 
 somewhat of glory. 
 
 Thucydides describes the ancient state of the coasts of 
 Greece in language that would be suitable to a picture in 
 olden time of the coasts of England. The old towns of both 
 countries, owing to the long continuance of piracy, were 
 built farther oiF from the sea, or inland. The later towns 
 were built on the sea-shores and on isthmuses, surrounded 
 by walls for protection. 
 
 And was not this the case in England ? The first church, 
 the parent church of many towns, is from the sea. Towns 
 that quite eclipse the original village exist, but are much more 
 recent. Thus, for example, see Wyke, the parent of Wey- 
 mouth ; Sutton Poyntz, of Melcombe ; Littleham, of Ex- 
 mouth ; Broadwater, of "Worthing ; Tor, of Torquay ; Brix- 
 ham, of Brixham-quay, for shortness Brixham. See Bridport, 
 Abbotsbury with its monastery, and Charmouth, placed 
 back from the sea. Our old Cinque-Port and sea-side towns 
 were walled, and they needed that protection. 
 
 Of all the social calamities of modern historical times the 
 incursions of the Barbary pirates was, perhaps, one of the 
 greatest, as it is one of the most forgotten. In Corsica the 
 traveller can even now trace the results of that long-con- 
 tinued plague. Population has been driven even from the 
 healthy parts of the coasts, and the hamlets, closely packed 
 for self-defence, stand high and conspicuous on the slopes 
 of the mountains, in sight of the little watch-towers on the 
 shore, &c.* 
 
 * Edinburgli Review, 1855. 
 F 3 
 
70 SOCIAL HISTOEY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Endless is the confusion that exists respecting the word 
 PIEATE. This is applied in a very loose manner to foreigners 
 carrying on war against their enemies ; to marauders and 
 enemies whose warfare was somewhat irregular; to privateers; 
 and to the genuine pirate, who is a sea-robber — a dishonest 
 man who goes to sea ready to plunder whatever craft he 
 chances to meet with. The buccaneers of the seventeenth 
 century only plundered the Spaniards; but, like poachers, their 
 occupation tempted them to be become thieves when a good 
 opportunity oflfered. 
 
 Privateers, whom the government in the present war 
 refuse to sanction, make war it is true on their private 
 account, and go forth in their own private vessels to cruise 
 against the enemy ; but they had the sanction of authority. 
 Letters of marque, or a licence to cruise against the enemies 
 of their country, were granted by the executive. 
 
 Our subject leads us to treat of genuine sea-robbers who 
 infested the British Channel, and whose exploits, unless cir- 
 cumstantially related, would appear fabulous. These pirates 
 were thorough-going seamen, thoroughly lawless and infamous 
 several of them in their transactions with one another. 
 Among men of diflFerent nations our countrymen obtained 
 notoriety. Scaliger has affirmed of us that none make 
 better pirates than the English (nuUi melius piraticam 
 exercent quam Angli). 
 
 Teignmouth was burnt by a French pirate in 1340.* 
 Yvan de Galles, or Evans the "Welshman, who landed in 
 Guernsey a.d. 1372, in the reign of Edward III., was in 
 the service of France; Pero Nino, who burnt Poole in 1406, 
 was from Spain ; Philpot, an eminent citizen in the reign 
 of Richard II., hired a thousand men, and sent them to sea, 
 where they captured fifteen Spanish vessels with their prizes. 
 The first was a Welshman in the service of a nation then 
 our enemy ; Pero Nino may, perhaps, be styled an enemy 
 warring against us in an irregular manner f ; while Philpot 
 resembled the privateer of recent wars. Colin Dolphin, of 
 evil fame for his exploits in the Bristol Channel, may be 
 * Stow's Annals. f A filibuster. 
 
PIEATE ADMIEALS. MARKETS. 7 1 
 
 fairly called pirate : and as such was treated by Sir Edward 
 Stradling, the bold owner of St. Donyatt's Castle, who 
 hanged him. When the Baron of Rosmital set out from 
 Poole to Guernsey upon his travels * through France and 
 Spain, his party of Bohemians were attacked and captured 
 by pirates, who, however, after detaining them half a day, 
 and having learned the rank of their prisoners, and how many 
 powerful kings and princes were their protectors, allowed 
 them to continue their voyage. Such, at all events, was the 
 ambassador's view of the case ; which, if a true one, makes 
 us deem that pirates in their robberies prescribed to them- 
 selves some bounds. 
 
 The marauding expeditions in the time of the Planta- 
 genets, and landings upon the coast to sack towns and burn 
 property, attended with horrible ravages, resemble those 
 generally assigned to pirates. But Southampton was sacked 
 by distinguished admirals of their day ; Bocca Negra, or in 
 French Barbe Noire or Black Beard of Froissart ; Sir Hugh 
 Quieret; and Sir Peter Behuchet. They commanded the 
 French, Spanish, and Grenoese fleets at Sluys. Though we 
 detest such brutal warfare, we cannot deny them the title of 
 regular commanders. They were in no sense pirates. They 
 conducted warfare according to the fashion — for war has its 
 fashions — of the time. 
 
 Tarring and Broadwater are about a mile inland from 
 Worthing in Sussex, and lie east and west about the same 
 distance. Tarring, though in the reign of Henry YI, a place 
 of repute, had no market, but procured a charter for one 
 about the year 1452. The reasons assigned by the men of 
 Tarring for their requiring a market savour doubtless of ex- 
 aggeration. Notwithstanding, no men could have indulged 
 in such language, had not the coasts presented incessantly 
 scenes of violence, caused by the incursions of lawless 
 enemies. They represent, that while at Broadwater market, 
 they had " dyvers times ben taken prisoners and byn slayn, 
 
 # Ti-anslated by Isidore Hye. Ghent, 1847. 
 r 4 
 
72 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 as well the men as the women, childer, maidenes, wives, and 
 doters therein beying and beleyving " by their enemies.* 
 
 The warfare upon the seas in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries was dreadful. As carried on by commanders of 
 diiFerent nations against their enemies, it may have assumed 
 the character of piracy as defined by modern rules. StiU we 
 cannot view the exploits of the dreaded Arripay against the 
 Spaniards as anything more than irregular English daring 
 against foreigners. 
 
 This Dorset worthy — in plain English, Harry Paye of 
 Poole — was a daring naval hero in the fleet of the Cinque 
 Ports with their admiral Lord Berkeley. When command- 
 ing the fleet of these ports, once so important, that every 
 naval matter appeared to emanate from them, the French 
 had proofs of his prowess, and likewise Owen Glendower in 
 his revolt in Wales. The Spanish historians record in bitter 
 language his visits to the coasts of Castile, carrying off" ships 
 and barques, and the most holy crucifix of those parts of Finis- 
 terra, which he burnt, as well as Gijon, making prisoners 
 and taking ransoms, scouring the coasts of Flanders, and 
 such deeds of naval daring. He brought home from the 
 coasts of Bretagne, after one expedition, 120 prizes, laden 
 with iron, Roohelle salt, and oil. 
 
 The monarchs of Spain and France agreed to unite their 
 forces to withstand these attacks. Forty ships were equipped 
 at Santander, and three galleys ; the latter under the com- 
 mand of the celebrated Pero Nino, of great fame in the 
 Mediterranean, who became Conde de Buelna. At Eochelle 
 two shallops, having French archers and arbalisters on board, 
 and two French galleys, commanded by a courtier who had 
 been brought up with Charles VI., and who had fallen into 
 disgrace, Mosen (Monsieur) Charles de Sabasil. 
 
 The crews cf the galleys, which had sailed without the 
 ships, upon arriving upon our coast landed and plundered, 
 according to the fashion of the time. Pero Nino having 
 learnt that he was near Poole, the abode of his countrymen's 
 
 * See Cartwright's Eape of Bramber; Warter's Parochial Fragments. 
 
PEEACHING. — PIRATES AT BEIGHTON. 13 
 
 dread enemy Arripay, boldly determined to avenge himself. 
 In 1405 Ferdinando Nino landed with the Spanish force at 
 Poole, the French commander deeming the enterprise too 
 rash. The Spaniards carried off arms and sea-stores, and 
 fired a storehouse, when the Poole men collected against the 
 invaders, holding doors before them as pavaises to protect 
 them against the crossbow shot. Pero Nino, finding matters 
 were becoming critical, landed, as did the French, to the 
 cry of " Santiago ; " when at length the brave townsmen re- 
 treated, leaving among the slain a brother of Arripay. The 
 invading Spaniards and Frenchmen went on board and pro- 
 ceeded on to Southampton. 
 
 Lymington, which had been made a port in the reign of 
 Henry I., furnished in the twenty-ninth year of Edward I.'s 
 reign 9 ships and 159 men towards the fleet for the protec- 
 tion of the south coast. 
 
 The dread of a foreign enemy continued for years to be so 
 great, that we can comprehend how Sir John Lyster, the 
 Lord Chief Justice, cautioned the famous Thomas Hancock, 
 in the reign of Edward VI., against preaching at South- 
 ampton. He may have done this without having really ad- 
 duced a ridiculous or insufiicient reason against the exercise 
 of his acknowledged powers in that way. The Lord Chief 
 Justice foresaw a division would be produced, owing to the 
 preacher's gospel-preaching against the mass. He feared 
 the divided town would afford a gap for the enemy to come 
 in. A predilection for the old form of worship probably 
 suggested to the judge the adducing some reason for silencing 
 its great assailant; still we cannot believe that sheer non- 
 sense was uttered ; but, on the contrary, that he had recourse 
 to an argument current at that epoch, and which we learn 
 proved to be of weight with the mayor of that town. 
 
 The plundering enemy, called pirates in an ancient account 
 of Brighton, caused a loss of 30,000/. to the fishermen of 
 that town. 
 
 Having learnt what the coast warfare between foreign 
 enemies and our English countrymen was, the next step 
 leads to the hostilities carried on between our countrymen 
 
74 SOCIAL HISTOEY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 who inhabited different towns upon the coast upon some 
 real or pretended wrongs inflicted. No warfare between 
 different races could be more decided. Men fought to the 
 death in their quarrel, whatever the cause was. Many sea- 
 port towns deemed themselves to be too distant from the 
 supreme government to expect aid therefrom; so they ad- 
 dressed themselves to remedy any evils they had to complain 
 of to avenge their own wrongs. Hence, when the country 
 was at peace, perhaps, with foreign powers, civil war was 
 urged between town and town. Let us take for an example 
 the case of Lyme and Dartmouth, two seaports of West 
 Dorset and South Devon. 
 
 Towards the close of the reign of Henry III. a great feud 
 existed between the inhabitants of these towns. The cause 
 is not known. Tradition is silent. 
 
 " Many enormous transgressions " had been perpetrated, 
 when a fight at sea ensued, in which conflict blows, wounds, 
 and homicides resulted. The king anticipated great dis- 
 turbance in these parts, unless a stop was put to this petty 
 warfare. A writ of inquiry was directed to Martin Littilbor', 
 John de Aure, and Simon de Grindham. The sheriffs of 
 each county were directed to summon witnesses and arrest 
 the guilty.* 
 
 The master fishermen of the Channel luggers found it, as 
 they now do, the best course to visit the Norfolk coast to 
 fish. They required to dry their nets ashore, and this at 
 Yarmouth was the main cause of a ferocious quarrel between 
 the men of Yarmouth and the sailors of the Cinque Ports. 
 When Edward I.'s navy was lying at Helvoet Sluys, in the 
 presence of an enemy, the crews of the Cinque-Port vessels 
 attacked the Yarmouth men, when twenty-five ships of 
 Yarmouth were burnt. King Edward III. was obliged to 
 prohibit any communication at sea between the rival vessels 
 of Yarmouth and the Cinque Ports, until he should have 
 composed their quarrels. 
 
 It is scarcely credible, were not these matters of history so 
 
 * Patent Rolls in tlie Tower, 49 Henry III. ni. 17. 
 
CINQUE-PORT PEIVILEGES AND QUAEEELS. 75 
 
 well attested, that regular safe-conducts were granted by 
 the king Edward I. to some vessels of the Cinque Ports 
 requiring to visit Yarmouth, as if it were an enemy's port.* 
 
 Camden, describing the town of Yarmouth, records, that 
 about the year 1340 the citizens walled that town round ; 
 and " in a short time became so rich and powerful, that they 
 often engaged their neighbours the Lestoffenses, or men of 
 LowestofF, in sea-fights, with great slaughter on both sides," 
 having a peculiar spite against them. 
 
 Great privileges had been bestowed upon the Cinque 
 Ports, in accordance with the spirit of too many of the 
 enactments of ancient times, by encroachments upon the 
 privileges and even common rights of others. The western 
 mariners suffered from this favour shown to the Cinque 
 Ports. This sense of wrong done them in favour of others, 
 who had become odious to them, led to violence. The exer- 
 cise of unjust privileges, as these were deemed, led to resist- 
 ance, while the others enforced their rights, and disputes and 
 bloodshed arose. 
 
 The authority of the king was required. Edward II. in 
 the year 1321 issued a writ to Edmund Earl of Kent, con- 
 stable of Dover Castle, setting forth that he had understood 
 that great dissension and dispute existed between the barons 
 of the Cinque Ports and the men and mariners of the 
 western parts of the towns of Poole, Weymouth, Melcombe, 
 Lyme, and Southampton, and other towns of the ports 
 adjacent, and are now anew sprung up, which have led to 
 murders, depredations, and burnings of ships (Jioviicidia, de- 
 predaciones et comhustiones naviuni), and very many other 
 injuries. 
 
 The king ordered public proclamation to be made in each 
 of these parts that no man do injury to men, mariners, or 
 ships of the aforesaid ports. Six barons were to attend at 
 Westminster and lay their complaints.! 
 
 We remain uninformed as to the precise causes of this 
 
 * Sussex Archseol. 
 
 f Rymer's Foedera, vol. ii. p. i., p. 456. 
 
76 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 lawless state of the English Channel, which equalled that 
 of real warfare with foreign enemies. Bad government was 
 in this reign the fertile source of domestic evils. Trifling 
 matters could hardly have roused such angry spirits in several 
 towns at once, and set them in array against other towns of 
 their own country. The western ports had enjoyed privi- 
 leges, and could not brook to see them taken away or 
 rendered valueless or nugatory by a wanton or corrupt grant 
 to some favourite of the hour. 
 
 In the year 1342 the principal inhabitants of Yarmouth 
 were fined 1000 marks for committing trespasses and other 
 unwarrantable acts on the sea-coast. This famous seaport 
 and Hull sent out marauders against London and Bristol. 
 The seamen of Fowey in Cornwall, known as the Fowey 
 Gallants, carried on a system of plunder on the coast of 
 Normandy. Being suspected of piracy in the reign of 
 Edward IV., their vessels were taken from them and given 
 to their rivals of Dartmouth ; a reverse of fortune from which 
 the town never recovered. 
 
 We need feel no surprise that the men engaged in such 
 local feuds became lawless when opportunity offered. With- 
 out any navy to keep them in check, the captains could do 
 what pleased them so soon as they were fairly at sea. They 
 could with ease cruize about the Channel without being ob- 
 served, as the number of vessels was then so inconsiderable. 
 Men took to the sea to rob, as men ashore begin poaching, 
 and proceed to acts of thieving and burglary when oppor- 
 tunities offer and there is no police to keep them in check. 
 
 Having dismissed that part of the subject that embraces 
 early invasions conducted in the fashion of the time, but 
 which are now deemed irregular or even piratical, and those 
 violent feuds between towns on our coast which led to 
 deeds that national warfare claims as its own, we proceed to 
 treat of real piracy. 
 
 By this and pirates is meant nothing less than actual 
 robbers upon the seas, — dishonest men, who, without any 
 warrant, sailed to secure plunder from any vessel they miglit 
 fall in with, foreign or of their own country. Some perhaps 
 
WILLIAM MORFOTE. — BARTHOLOMEW COLUMBUS, 77 
 
 confined themselves to plundering vessels of foreign powers, 
 as certain robbers seem to prescribe a particular field of 
 action ashore ; and many spared no English vessel, having 
 abjured their country and adopted another land as their own. 
 There were pirates, or robber-cruizera, who were foreigners, 
 and who had a kind of predilection for English craft. 
 
 Incidents will be adduced that serve as proofs of the state 
 of the English Channel. 
 
 William Morfote, who represented Winchelsea in Parlia- 
 ment in 1428, was a privateer with a hundred men under 
 him. He found it necessary to obtain the king's pardon in 
 1435, by the advice of Parliament, there being a legal difii- 
 culty about his having broken prison at Dover Castle. 
 
 Two merchants of Sherborne in Dorsetshire were robbed 
 of their cargo, worth 80/., a.d. 1322, by Robert de Battayle. 
 This transaction did not lose him the good opinion of his 
 townsmen, who chose him Mayor of Winchelsea a few years 
 later.* 
 
 Columbus, before he found a patroness in Isabella of 
 Spain, sent his brother Bartholomew to our Henry VII. in 
 1488. 
 
 In his passage to England Bartholomew was captured 
 by pirates, plundered of everything, and made a slave. 
 After some time he made his escape, and reached this 
 country; but in such a state of destitution, that he was 
 obliged to apply himself to drawing sea-charts for a liveli- 
 hood, and for the means of procuring himself decent clothes, 
 before he could appear in the royal presence. 
 
 King Henry so far listened to his proposals as to desire 
 him to bring his brother to England ; and he was on his 
 way to Spain for that purpose when, on reaching Paris, he 
 learned that Columbus had already set out on his voyage 
 under the patronage of the Spanish court. 
 
 How would this adventure figure in the history of events 
 that might have happened ? What would have resulted to 
 the fortunes of England, for good or harm, if the brother of 
 
 * Contribution of W. H. Blauw, Esq., to the Sussex Avcha?ol., 
 vol. iv. p. 111. 
 
78 SOCIAL HISTOET OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Columbus had succeeded in reaching these shores unmo- 
 lested by pirates ? 
 
 The famous Cardan was at Dover in 1531, on his return 
 to the Continent. Contrary winds had detained him ; but he 
 sailed at last at short notice, " the ship being in a hurry to 
 depart through fear of pirates." 
 
 King Edward VI. issued a proclamation, a. D. Oct. 1548, 
 against sundry lewd and evil-disposed persons who had be- 
 come pirates and had robbed the king's own merchants and 
 others the subjects of friendly powers. They had taken 
 sailors and others out of ships, and had compelled them 
 to serve against their will. Their names follow, and the 
 reward offered for each, quick or dead. John Thompson 
 1000 crowns; Richard Cole, 600; Thomas Freeman, 400; 
 David Poore, 300 ; Morrice Kelly, Richard Eyre, Patrick 
 King, Thomas Outlawe, and Michael James, each 300 
 crowns reward. 
 
 In a report of the prisoners in the Tower, Oct. 22. 1549*, 
 is a highly illustrative account of Richard Coole of Mine- 
 head, in the north of Somerset. He had been a pirate for 
 one year, and had taken divers prizes. At last he sued the 
 Lord Deputy of Ireland, Mr. Bellingham, in five petitions to 
 be allowed to come in and submit to the king's mercy. The 
 Lord Deputy employed him; and sent him to a castle in 
 Straugham in Ireland, which the Scots had taken from the 
 owner and occupied it. The pirate, now engaged in the 
 cause of right, of lawful government and order, recovered the 
 castle, and reinstated the owner. The Lord Deputy next en- 
 gaged the successful pirate against one Savage, a rebel whom 
 his servants were about to attack, promising as a reward to 
 sue for his pardon. It is presumed his services were suc- 
 cessful. He surrendered voluntarily at the Isle of Man and 
 had been in prison to the time stated. The answer was that 
 he was to be examined, and the admiral's officers were to de- 
 cide upon his case. 
 
 * Sir F. Tytler's England under the Reigns of Edward VI. and 
 Mary, vol. i. p. 271., from the State Paper Office. 
 
COMMISSION FOE TAKING PIRATES. 79 
 
 In a book of the Admiralty Court of Poole, commencing 
 A. T>. 1550, among directions for the jurors, appears : — 
 
 " Also you shall inquyere of all piratts that rohbyth uppon the 
 sea any of the king's leadge people, or any other w'ch are in 
 leage and amyty with the kinge of this realme. If you know 
 any such, you shall present ther names, as also the ownners, 
 masters, victuallers, mayntaynners, comforters, abettors and 
 recevers, as also what manner of goods or marchandizes is so 
 robbyd." * 
 
 The bailiff of Seaford (24 Elizabeth) charged all in court 
 to declare at their peril, " those who did foyster, ayde, vitell, 
 maynteyne, or succor any theves or pyrates." "f 
 
 It is mentioned in the poem " The Libel of English 
 Policy," that the inhabitants of St. Malo were accustomed 
 to roam the seas as pirates, little regarding the authority of 
 their duke. They made descents upon the east part of 
 England, plundering the country, and exacting contributions 
 or ransoms from the towns. 
 
 In 1557 the lords of the Privy Council, among whom 
 were the Earls of Sussex, Winchester, Rutland, Pembroke, 
 Anth, Mountague, &c., addressed a letter J to our western 
 ports, desiring the mayors to use vigilance for defence of the 
 towns and coasts against the enemy. From this year dates 
 the first visit of the Earl of Bedford to the south-western 
 coast. John Hassard, Mayor of Lyme, charged in his ac- 
 count 2*. 2d. for wine given to that nobleman. Again in 
 1569 the charge for entertaining my Lord of Bedford was 
 31. 9s. ; a very large sum, which no doubt included the ex- 
 penses of the suite and keep of their horses. The Earl of 
 Bedford's visits to Lyme were upon important business, as 
 will be shown. He was a commissioner appointed by her 
 Majesty's letters patent for the authorising certain persons 
 to be sent to the seas for the taking of pikates haunting 
 THE coasts, or, in the words of the insteuctions for the 
 
 * Sydenham's History of Poole. 
 
 ■j- Sussex Archa2ol. 
 
 I MS. lately sold at Mr. Thorpe's, London. 
 
80 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 direction of the commissioners*, " for the apprehension, sup- 
 pressing, and removing such pirates as do haunt or infest the 
 sea-coasts within the precincts of their commission." 
 
 Whenever the commissioners had understanding of any 
 such pirates they were to confer with the officers and 
 merchants residing in our ports that authority might be 
 given to some honest (i. e. honourable) persons to arm forth 
 some vessels to the seas to apprehend or chase away the 
 same with some speed. They were to consider in a secret 
 manner how the thing may be done, and, what intimately 
 affected the men of the west, to settle how contribution was 
 to be made of the merchants and inhabitants thereabouts for 
 the charges requisite. 
 
 Such impositions as these upon a particular locality, which 
 ought to have been borne by the state at large, were felt 
 to be a cruel injustice, as they really were. 
 
 The great attention paid to the procuring proper persons, 
 and the care to provide against their turning out sea-robbers 
 or pirates themselves, is very striking. 
 
 The commissioners were to choose suitable persons, who 
 would attempt nothing for private lucre. They were directed 
 to take bonds of the persons themselves who sent out the 
 vessels, and sureties of the captain and mate of the ship, 
 to behave and demean themselves honestly, and neither rob, 
 spoil, nor evil entreat any the good subjects of her Majesty 
 or other princes being in good peace or amity. These 
 officers were to do their best endeavour to capture the pirates, 
 and not by any kind of collusion, agreement, or compact to 
 suffer them to depart. They were not to remain at sea, but 
 for the capture of the pirates haunting the coasts, and were 
 not to sail again unless provided with a new commission. 
 When pirates were captured they were to be landed at the 
 nearest port, presented to the vice-admiral or the com- 
 missioner, and then sent to the common gaol for trial. The 
 piratical vessel, and all she contained, was to be brouo-ht 
 
 * Harleian MS. 168. A collection of state matters in the Land of 
 Mr. R. Starkey. 
 
Elizabeth's instructions to ckuisees. 81 
 
 Into port and valued upon the oaths of four skilful and expert 
 persons of those parts. The Inventory was to remain till it 
 could be found what belonged to the pirates, and what was 
 the plunder taken from others. But lest this arrangement 
 should create disappointment, it was enjoined upon the 
 commissioners to inform the parties interested, as a matter 
 certainly determined, that in the distribution of the ships 
 and property taken from the pirates " no charge shall more 
 sooner be considered, allowed of, and paid than of those that 
 have borne the burden of setting forth the ships ; and the 
 reward of such as have adventured themselves in that service 
 to be paid of the proper goods of the pirates." 
 
 The cruisers after pirates were not to board or molest 
 trading or fishing vessels, and they were to take such a 
 number of men as was needful, so as not to hazard her 
 Majesty's good subjects in a doubtful service. 
 
 Though the above instructions may date from the year 
 1578, they have been inserted here as being appropriate in 
 elucidating and introducing the subject. 
 
 Henry Palmer, Esq., was appointed captain of her Majesty's 
 ships sent forth for the clearing of the seas and apprehen- 
 sion of pirates, 19th March, 1576. 
 
 Her Majesty understood by the grievous and sundry 
 complaints made by her subjects of the great spoil by them 
 daily sustained at the hands of such as now of late have 
 sore infested the narrow seas, as not only not her own said 
 subjects, but also no foreign merchants can in anywise 
 occupy their honest and lawful trades of merchandise. Pity- 
 ing therefore greatly the case of many of her subjects who 
 by those spoils have been utterly undone, and weighing 
 besides how dishonourable it is to her Majesty to suffer those 
 seas of which she and her predecessors have been accounted 
 to have always held supreme sovereignty, to be by such 
 lewd persons haunted, besides the great abatement of her 
 customs as well outwards as inwards, thought it most neces- 
 sary to set out certain of her ships, whereof she committeth 
 to their discretion for the clearing of the seas and the appre- 
 hension of the said malefactors. 
 
82 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIKS. 
 
 Captain Palmer was to arrest ships armed for war — not 
 trading — between Yarmouth and the Isle of Wight, and not 
 to molest the Dutch. 
 
 The lords of the Privy Council, 6th August, 1576, addressed 
 "William Holstocke, Esq., a captain appointed to serve at the 
 seas for apprehending of sea rovers. 
 
 Captain Holstocke was informed that men of Flushing, 
 pretending to be in foreign service, caused daily complaints to 
 be made. Her Majesty was determined to scour and cleanse 
 the seas. Captain Holstocke, in his command of the " Lion," 
 the "Swiftsure," and the "Dreadnought," was to join the 
 "Archat," the "Foresight," and the "Handmaid," under the 
 orders of Captain Palmer, and these ships were to form a fleet. 
 The lords of the council informed him that at Torbay, or about 
 the coast, were thirteen ships of Flushing, which not only 
 daily spoiled and robbed her Majesty's subjects, but infested 
 and troubled all others that traded upon the coast, whereby 
 men were put in fear in those parts to make any voyage on 
 the seas. 
 
 The fleet was first to sail to Torbay and take the Flushing- 
 ers peaceably ; if not so, by force.* 
 
 Queen Elizabeth sent out in 1575 a proclamation against 
 people keeping on the seas armed vessels to commit rob- 
 beries. 
 
 In 1577 the lords of the Privy Council wrote to the Mayor 
 of Poole respecting a French ship upon which an embargo 
 was laid, and pirates, f 
 
 With such a state of affairs existing the coming of a great 
 courtier with intelligence and powers to act, after consulta- 
 tion with our western borough magnates, must have been 
 hailed as a great event. What excitement at this time can 
 equal it ? William Jurden, Mayor of Lyme, duly impressed 
 with the greatness of the occasion, made some preparation 
 for the event. He enters in his account, 1 3th January, 157 7-8. 
 
 "Item, for the mending of Colway Lane, 13 Jan., against the 
 coming of my Lord of Bedford, 3«. 4«?." 
 
 * Harleian MS. 168. f MS. Letters on sale at Mr. Thorpe's. 
 
PROTECTION AND ITS COST. 83 
 
 Entertainment suitable to his lordship's rank was furnished; 
 so that by the 16th January there was entered " for charge, 
 at my Lord of Bedford's being here," no less a sum than 
 10/. 6*. Srf. 
 
 There was soon occasion for further steps to be taken ; so 
 the mayor and Mr. Ellesdon rode with a servant, 18th April, 
 to Exeter to my Lord of Bedford, at a charge of 8s. 
 
 The lords of the council now instructed William George, 
 Esq., 17th June, 1578, to take as captain the command of 
 her Majesty's ship the " Foresight," and sail from the Thames 
 into the narrow seas in the west of England towards Ply- 
 mouth, particularly to take two special pirates named 
 Hamilton and Twittie. Captain George was to inform the 
 Earl of Bedford of his coming upon the coast, and follow 
 directions for the pursuit of the aforesaid pirates or any other, 
 and to inquire what pirates or avowed enemies are upon the 
 coast of Brittany, Normandy, or other places towards Spain 
 or Portugal. 
 
 The " Foresight " had not arrived at Lyme by July 23rd, 
 when the mayor enters in his account : — 
 
 " jTfem, for charge of myself, Mr. Ellesdon, and Richard Carpenter 
 Pa lawyer, who became, at the incorporation of the town, town 
 clerk] to ride to my Lord of Bedford about the coming of the 
 Queen's ship, 13s. 4d." 
 
 Great was the satisfaction at the protection about to be 
 afforded to our townsmen in their commerce, which lawless 
 hands interrupted; but in Queen Elizabeth's reign such 
 good was of a mixed nature, — the townsmen of Lyme had 
 to pay for the benefit about to be reaped, as if it was not for 
 England generally, but for Lyme, or Dorset, or Devon indi- 
 vidually considered. 
 
 The mayor adds further : — 
 
 " Item, to my Lord of Bedford of the money received of Mr. 
 Ellesdon for the fine of the miU, 30Z. " 
 
 At this time Captain Winter was sent to sea upon her 
 Majesty's service ; and directed to look after one La Roche, 
 
 G 2 
 
84 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES, 
 
 a Frenchman who was fitting out ships, and conferred with 
 James Fitzmorris, an Irishman. 
 
 We read as appropriate to the matter before us, that Car- 
 dinal de Lorraine, when Mary, Queen of Scots, set out from 
 France to Scotland in 1561, was in fear for the safety of 
 many valuables his niece took with her, as Queen Elizabeth 
 had fitted out a fleet under the pretext of clearing the North 
 Seas from pirates. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth had three ships in the North Seas in 
 1561 to preserve the fishermen ivova pirates* 
 
 In the year 1570 a great contest arose between the Bishop 
 of Chichester and the Lord High Admiral respecting the 
 right to the wreck of a pirate's ship. 
 
 Certain Flemings, pirates, were complained of for being in 
 the narrow seas and assailing the King of Spain's subjects. 
 It appears clear that the goods and merchandise captured 
 was sold to our countrymen in the bays and creeks along our 
 coasts. 
 
 About the year 1577, when France sent 150 ships to 
 Newfoundland to fish for cod, Spain 100, Portugal 50, and 
 England only 15, as they mostly fished off Iceland, these 
 early fisherman were a prey to pirates. The English ships 
 were the best ; and beat off the pirates, taking from those 
 they had protected a boat-load of salt, or other present of 
 that nature, which it had been of old a custom to make for 
 this service. 
 
 A notorious pirate, one Thomas Purser, infested the 
 south-western coast. On the 5th February, 1582-3, he 
 made a " very insolent and rebellious attempt " on the Dor- 
 setshire coast. He drew near Weymouth harbour, and 
 attacked many ships, both English and French, riding in the 
 road at anchor. This pirate took a ship of Pochelle of 60 
 tons ; and in bis attempt to carry another near was inter- 
 rupted by the stout townsmen of Weymouth and Melcombe 
 who came to the rescue. They killed seven of the pirate's 
 crew, hurt and maimed several others, and compelled bim to 
 
 * Miss Strickland's Life of Marj, Queen of Scots. 
 
TRANSACTIONS WITH PIRATES. 85 
 
 sheer off. Purser dealt out threats of vengeance by spoil 
 and fire upon the ships and town that had so resisted him. 
 
 The Weymouth men now feared for their town, which was 
 not sufficiently protected. They asked assistance from the 
 county for their own protection, and that of the country round, 
 towards hringing and planting some ordnance, procuring 
 powder and shot, and towards the maintenance of the whole, 
 after having erected a small bulwark upon the seaside. 
 
 The lords of the council seconded their request, and a 
 letter signed Burleigh, Leicester, Walsingham, Christopher 
 Hatton, &c., was sent to the sheriff and justices of Dorset 
 for a contribution towards the above object, having learnt all 
 the particulars from the Mayor of Weymouth, February 10. 
 
 £ 
 
 The estimate for 8 pieces of ordnance was - - 80 
 
 powder and shot - - 40 
 
 carriages, wheels, sponges, &c. - 20 
 
 Expense of the bulwarks and platforms, 2 in Wey- 1 
 
 mouth, 2 in Melcomb, and powder-houses J 
 
 £200 
 
 As thieves upon land must find receivers of the stolen 
 goods, so it is with pirates. The cheapness of the articles 
 they wish to dispose of proves too great a temptation to the 
 dishonest, and thus piracy was supported, and too often per- 
 haps rewarded. 
 
 The Mayor of Weymouth examined, January 9. 1583-4, 
 four persons, John Hunt, Richard Bownell, Henry Higgens 
 and William Bond. These men, upon being sworn, confessed 
 that they went aboard one Thomas Purser the pirate's 
 vessel the day before, that is, January 8., then riding in 
 Portland Road, in Richard Bownell's boat, having been 
 sent aboard by John Wade with a letter written in French. 
 
 John Wade's name occurs as a merchant or tradesman of 
 Weymouth. The nature of his business with the pirate will 
 appear from the answer of the latter. His breast stiU burning 
 with vengeance for his defeat, he said openly, if he could 
 
 * Shei'i'en Papers. 
 G 3 
 
86 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 take any shipping of Weymouth any day these six months 
 he would surely set them on iire. John Hunt affirmed that 
 a letter produced which follows here was in the handwriting 
 of the pirate. 
 
 "Mr. Wade, — I have received a letter in French from you, and 
 having no man aboard that can read it, so by this bearer I 
 understand it is to buy the ship*, which willingly I would sell her, 
 with all the goods that is in her, saving six barrels herrings. 
 The price that he shall give for ship and goods is 1001., otherways 
 he shall see her to make a beaune fyer (bonfire) ; moreover, he 
 shall bring 1000 byskey (biscuit), 2 ton of beer, in part of 
 payment of the money. Thus I rest, yours to command, 
 
 " Thomas Puksee." 
 
 As there are various kinds of morality in practice in the 
 world, so doubtless there was one kind in respect of dealing 
 with pirates. Perhaps it was allowed under that code to 
 buy vessels and cargoes taken from traders of another nation. 
 Wade was at Weymouth in 1587. Men of no morals we 
 may readily believe bought bargains at every opportunity, 
 and sent off a boat whenever a pirate came along the coast. 
 Neither highwaymen by land nor pirates by sea could exist 
 long if all the world were unfriendly. They must have had 
 many to co-operate with ; many who felt indifferent or even 
 well disposed towards them. 
 
 Valentine Dale and David Lewis, doctors of civil law, were 
 specially consulted touching aiders of pirates. Nicholas 
 Herbert, Esq., John Thomas Bener, and William Richards 
 had been examined at Cardiff touching the lodging, vic- 
 tualling and buying the goods of pirates, f 
 
 A commission was issued by the Crown, 20 Eliz. 22nd 
 January, 1578 which had become absolutely necessary. In it 
 was recited that divers ill-disposed persons had of late in 
 sundry vessels and ships frequented the seas upon the coasts 
 of this realm, robbing and spoiling honest quiet merchants 
 and others; which pirates were victualled and furnished 
 
 * The " Angel" of Rochelle. Sherren Papers, 
 t Hai-leian MS. 168. 
 
POOLE AND THE PIRATES. 87 
 
 by persons residing near or within the havens, creeks, or 
 landing-places of the realm, taking the stolen goods of the 
 pirates in exchange. Under this commission were appointed 
 the Mayor of Poole, William Marquis of Winchester, 
 Thomas Viscount Howard of Bindon, Sir Henry Ashley, 
 Sir Matthew Arundell, Sir John Horsey, Sir John Yonge, 
 the Recorder of Poole, George Trenchard, and William 
 Hussey, Esquires, commissioners to prevent such enormities 
 being used in the havens, creeks, and landing-places of the 
 town of Poole ; with power to choose honest, discreet, and 
 trusty persons dwelling within or near every of the said 
 havens, creeks, and landing-places of the town of Poole, for 
 the prevention of such practices, to repair once every month 
 to such havens, &c., to ascertain how the deputies performed 
 their duties, and to issue precepts to the sheriiF to impannel 
 juries to try offenders. 
 
 A French pirate, as it was conjectured, went to sea upon 
 a cruise between Guernsey and Dorsetshire, having twelve 
 men. They boarded a small barque of Poole on her return 
 from Guernsey within one league of Swanage, taking canvas 
 to the value of 12 marks and 61. in money. The authorities 
 of Poole declared that the trade with Guernsey could not 
 be maintained unless piracy was put down. They applied 
 for a license to set forth a barque or two well manned at 
 their own charge against these pests of the Channel. 
 
 This must have been in 1583, for a commission was issued, 
 August 8. 1583, giving power to some of the Poole magnates 
 to set forth ships against the pirates and rovers and to try 
 them ; and the Mayor of Poole was ordered by Lord Burghley 
 and the lords of the council to fit out a ship against the 
 pirates infesting the coast in 1584.* Lyme and other ports 
 near the scene of these lawless visitations prepared to make 
 head against their special foes the pirates. 
 
 Who knows of the victory of the Weymouth men and 
 capture of the pirate Sprage ? or who would have known it 
 but for complaints to the ministry about the transaction ? 
 
 * MS. Letter on sale at Mr. Thorpe's, London. 
 G 4 
 
88 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 In August, 1584j a ship of Chichester stood into Portland 
 Eoad for shelter. The same bad weather must have caused 
 the pirate Sprage, together with a prize, to run into the same 
 anchorage. Being known, the men of Weymouth sent a 
 merchant aboard the Chichester ship, desiring, but not com- 
 manding, the captain to join a ship and pinnace of the town 
 in the apprehension of Sprage. Great expedition was re- 
 quired, as it was stated, lest secret information might be 
 furnished of the intended operations against the pirate — • 
 another intimation of the understanding that existed between 
 these desperate characters and many people ashore. 
 
 Powder and every requisite having been furnished, the 
 Chichester men began to repent of their having entered 
 upon this undertaking [^here the AIiS. is indistinct]. The 
 whole ship's company at one time refused to sail ; they 
 changed their minds, got under weigh, and anchored near 
 the pirate, discharging a few shot without doing any damage. 
 The Weymouth men boarded the pirate and carried her. 
 The Weymouth pinnace having three or four of the Chi- 
 chester men aboard her besides her own crew, boarded the 
 pirate's prize. So soon as the Weymouth men had carried 
 the prize the others came aboard and helped themselves to 
 many articles, which were begrudged. 
 
 The Chichester men complained to Sir Francis Walslng- 
 ham, and pretended they were the principals in capturing 
 the pirates. This occasioned a full narrative of the whole 
 transaction to be made, of which we have availed ourselves. 
 
 A defeat of the lawless was procured farther west in 1586, 
 or at least in the year of Mr. Ellesdon's mayoralty at Lyme. 
 Nothing more is known of the atfair than appears in the fol- 
 lowing account.* How daring these marauders must have 
 been for the captains of certain French vessels then on the 
 coast, or sheltered in the Cobb of Lyme, to have joined in 
 the expenses of an outfit against common robbers ! Do we 
 not see herein the benefits of centralisation ? Did the west 
 of England fully enjoy what we can really call civilisation at 
 this epoch ? 
 
 * Loose sheet among the Archives of Lyme. 
 
DISBUKSEMENTS FOR PIKATES. 89 
 
 Money disbursed about the Pieates as followeth : — 
 
 s. d. 
 First, paid for the use of eleven horses and eight men, 
 
 to carry the prisoners to Dorchester - - 28 2 
 
 Item, paid for the prisoners' meat and drink during 
 
 the time they were here - - - - 2 6 
 
 Item, for the watchmen to watch the piisoners - - 12 
 
 Item, paid for 2 mayling cords to bind the prisoners - 12 
 Item, paid to the gaoler of Dorchester for receiving 
 
 [ten in number, at 4d each] the prisoners - - 3 4 
 
 Item, paid for Mr. Hardes charges, dinner and supper, 
 
 and for his horse-meat for 2 days, and to take the 
 
 examinations and to make the mittimus - - 14 6 
 
 £ 
 Item, for 60 pound of gunpowder and the shot - 3 10 
 
 Item, paid for one hogshead of beer for the mariners to 
 
 carry to the sea, and one dozen and half of bread 14 10 
 
 [The Lyme mariners, who cruised after the pirates.] 
 Item, paid to two men of Birpott [Bridport], which 
 
 did help conduct the prisoners to Dorchester - 2 
 
 Sum total - - - ^6 17 6 
 
 Whereof received of the French men and of Sidmouth 
 
 men - - - - - 3 16 8 
 
 So rest unpaid of this bill - - J3 10 
 
 [Here is an error of 10*. Certain Frenchmen and Sidmouth- 
 men made common cause, and defrayed part of the cost of the 
 expedition and committal of the pirates.] 
 
 The dreaded Spaniards did not land in the west after 
 1595, when they disembarked at Mousehole near Penzance. 
 Our townsmen the same year captured more pirates. 
 William EUesdon, mayor, charges for the hire of a horse to 
 carry Eobert Williams and three pirates to Dorchester gaol. 
 
 s. d. 
 Paid to three men to carry four prisoners to Dorchester 
 
 gaol - - - - - - - 7 6 
 
 for cord to pinion the prisoners - - - 3 
 
 the jailer to receive the prisoners - - - 8 
 
 to the same prisoners to drink by the way - 4 
 
90 SOCIAX, HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 «. d. 
 
 Witness to Dorchester, each - - - - 2 
 
 Meat and drink for four days in the town prison - - 2 3 
 
 In 1597 France and England were mutually complaining 
 and quarreling about the violence and injury committed by 
 the pirates of either nation. 
 
 Our western mayors not only contended with pirates but 
 had to exercise their authority to restrain parties from setting 
 out upon irregular warfare or actual piracy. A pinnace of 
 "Weymouthj called the " Gift," was arrested by the mayor in 
 July, 1587, as she was bound to sea in "warlike sort." 
 Edwards, one of the crew, waited upon Lord Winchester, the 
 Lord Lieutenant of the county, and showed him a licence 
 from the Lord Admiral ; upon which the mayor was directed 
 to allow this vessel to sail upon her privateering cruise. No 
 vessel was to sail without a licence. 
 
 The Mayor of Weymouth was directed at this time to 
 make diligent search about the town for a notable pirate, 
 Thomas Davers, alias Puterell or Putteirs. Weymouth and 
 Melcombe petitioned for forts in 1587. 
 
 A pirate, one of a body whose leader was named Laynton 
 Atkinson, took a barque belonging to John Ward of Wey- 
 mouth, and carried her to Swanage. There 40 packs of 
 canvas, worth 100/., belonging to John Mounsell, were taken 
 out. The Mayor of Weymouth adds that, if there is not 
 good information that summer about the presence of the 
 pirates, " no man will be able to travel ; " which means, it is to 
 be presumed, that the Channel will be impassable to merchant 
 shipping.* 
 
 Of the 21 craft that composed the shipping of Poole, the 
 only port technically so styled of Dorset, in 1591 but three, 
 varying from 24 to 14 tons each, were without ordnance, 
 either fowlers, sakers, mynions, or falcons ! 
 
 These statements convey an idea of the state of the 
 
 Channel and of some of the transactions. Much is lost or 
 
 buried perhaps amidst archives or old papers. There was a 
 
 pirate hanging at this time at Studland, an eyesore to his 
 
 " Pitt, the Mayor's Letter — loose sheet, no date. Sherren Papers. 
 
PROCLAMATIONS AGAINST PIEATE8. 91 
 
 living fellows, who landed and cut down the gallows.* The 
 capture of pirates was referred to as a very common occur- 
 rence in certain articles drawn up to avoid contentions 
 between the Mayor of Weymouth and the officers of the 
 Lord High Admiral. It was a pirate. Captain Fleminge, 
 who first saw and gave warning of the approach of the 
 Spanish Armada. 
 
 There was a mania for lawless roving inthis reign, and, 
 we may add, lawless dealing. Warrants came to our mayors 
 in 1593 from the Lord Admiral to seize a carvel which 
 belonged to Thomas Alworthy and Thomas Ware of Bristol. 
 The crew carried her off and sold her. The purchasers 
 ■ changed her name to that of the " Tobacco-pipe," and sent 
 her to sea as a privateer. She had captured a rich cargo of 
 hides. 
 
 The pirates were occasionally worsted, and suffered the 
 punishment due to their crimes. We may learn this from a 
 quarto pamphlet, entitled " The Lives, Apprehension, Ar- 
 raignments and Executions of the Nineteen Pirates, 
 Captains Harris, Jennings, Lancaster, Downes, Halse, and 
 others."! 
 
 We learn from a proclamation in 1603 that the offenders 
 named had done violence principally upon the Venetians, 
 Captain Thomas Tomkins, Gent., Edmond Bonham, mariner, 
 Walter Janverin, ditto, and divers other English pirates. 
 
 In a proclamation, November 12. 1604, Captain William 
 Hull of the " Talbot " of Topsham, Philip Ward of the 
 " Thomasine " of Dartmouth, Christopher Newman, Edward 
 FoUet, Henry Burt, and others are named, who in 1602 had 
 spoiled La Serene of Cloud in France, and murdered divers 
 of the Frenchmen. 
 
 Again, on June 13. 1606, there was a proclamation against 
 pirates who had committed in the course of their piracy 
 murder and robbery against foreigners in the Mediterranean. 
 There was Captain Richard Giffard or Gifford of the ship or 
 
 * Pitt, the Mayor's Letter — loose sheet, no date. Sherren Papers, 
 ■j" This was marked in Thorpe's Catalogue 31. 13s. 6d. 
 
92 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 fly-boat the " Fortune," Richard Lux of the " Hopewell," 
 "William Mellon, Humphry EastoU, Thomas Better, Robert 
 Gyles, John Thomas, John Burrage, Baldwin Barber, 
 Henry Radclifle, John Banister, William Smith. 
 
 A proclamation of 1608 was sent out against pirates and 
 John "Ward. It directs that no munitions of war should be 
 imported into Algiers and Tunis to the pirates there. 
 
 There is some mention of Dunkerhs, or frigates, from the 
 well-known port of that name, in 1603, which is not ex- 
 plained. 
 
 " Town Accompt Book. 
 
 " Mr. Harvey received of Mr. John Vyney [a receiver of Cobb 
 duties], about the Dunkerks, 51." 
 
 King James I. in his patent, August 28. 1610, refers to the 
 sufferings of the men of Lyme, which will confirm the view 
 taken of the losses caused by the unruly characters who took 
 possession of our sea. He proceeds thus : " And forasmuch 
 as the inhabitants of the said town are of late much im- 
 poverished by PYKATES on the sea and otherwise, — now 
 kuow ye, that we, tendering the good of our said town, and 
 of other our loving subjects, which in distress of weather or 
 of PTRATES, or upon other occasion, may be presumed by 
 reason of the said harbour commonly called the Cobb, &c., do 
 grant twenty pounds by the year for twenty-one years." 
 
 About the end of March, 1627, Sir "William Courtenay ex- 
 perienced the great insecurity of property in the then actual 
 state of the British Channel. He possessed a castellated man- 
 sion, Ilton Castle near Salcombe, in the most southerly part of 
 Devon, not far from the Start Point, which was built by Sir 
 John Chiverston in 1335, who had a grant from the crown 
 for that purpose. It came to the Courtenays by marriage ; 
 and is now, though but small remains exist, the property of 
 the Earl of Devon. Certain pirates, writes "Walter Yonge 
 in his Diary *, came up in boats from Salcombe, and carried 
 off much of Sir "W. Courtenay's pewter-plate and household 
 stuff], and fled the same way they came, without being ap- 
 
 * Diarj of Walter Yonge, published by the Camden Society. Edited by 
 Geoi'n-e Roberts. 
 
MAHOMETAN COESAIRS IN THE CHANNEL. 93 
 
 pretended. This circumstance has been nowhere recorded 
 except in the above Diary. 
 
 Pirates occasioned entries in the churchwardens' books. 
 The evil was understood, and charity was not withheld. 
 Take for example an entry made at Broad Blunsdon : " Paid 
 to one that was burnt in Ireland by pirates." 
 
 The second period in the history of piracy upon our 
 western coast has now to be treated of. The compara- 
 tively ignoble names of Coole and Purser find no mention 
 in this division of the subject ; others more aristocratic usurp 
 their place. Much of the history would appear to belong 
 to fable, were it not mixed up with well-known names of 
 persons and places. Our country truly appears disgraced by 
 the transactions that are here recorded from archives of 
 borough seaports, where the scenes were enacted. 
 
 The possession of our Channel by Algerine, Tunisian and 
 Salee, Turks, or Mahometan corsairs, is sufficiently startling. 
 Such was the fact ; some explanation is, however, demanded, 
 in order to show how such a miserable state of things was 
 produced. Fashionable it was at one time to take to the 
 road; popular, if not strictly fashionable, it was to turn 
 Turk and lead the life of a corsair. 
 
 A great antiquary in his genealogical labours has recently 
 thrown great light upon this subject, when explaining the 
 common report that Ralph Vemey had gone into Africa and 
 "turned Turk."* 
 
 The death of Muley Hamet, Emperor of Morocco, was 
 followed by a war of succession ; his three sons disputed the 
 right, and a considerable body of Englishmen volunteered. 
 One of the claimants, Muley Sidan, had 200 Englishmen 
 under the command of one of the Gifiards, of which few were 
 left alive after a great battle. 
 
 Elizabeth had employed many English as privateers 
 against the Spaniard. After the war many were loth to lead an 
 inactive life. They had their commissions revoked, and were 
 
 * John Bruce, Esq., editor of the "Vemey Papers."' Published by the 
 Camden Society. 
 
94 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 proclaimed pirates. The public looked upon them as gallant 
 fellows ; the merchants gave them underhand support ; and 
 even the authorities in maritime towns connived at the sale 
 of their plunder. In spite of proclamations, during the first 
 five years after the accession of James I. there were con- 
 tinual complaints. This lawless way of life even became 
 popular. Many Englishmen furnished themselves with good 
 ships and scoured the seas, but little careful whom they 
 might plunder. 
 
 The ports of England were shut against them. They went 
 where they were welcome, to the ports of Tunis, Algiers, and 
 the coast of Barbary. Thither they resorted for occasional 
 shelter, and thither English traders followed on purpose to 
 barter and traflSc with them. There was Captain Richard 
 Giffard, of the ship or fly-boat the " Fortune," a dread name 
 in those days. Their chief was Captain John Ward, one 
 Bishop, Sir Francis Verney, GlanviUe, and others. Mr. 
 Bruce continues his information, and tells us that Sir Francis 
 Verney adopted the costume of the country. The Genoese, 
 the Florentines, and the Spaniards all suffered. In 1612 
 James I. attempted to show what kindness might effect. 
 Many came home upon the proffer of pardon for life and 
 goods; the greater number stiU adhered to their wild and 
 desperate life. How they scoured the English and St. 
 George's Channel, leading the Barbary corsairs to plunder 
 property and make captives of our fellow-countrymen, will 
 be shown in detail. 
 
 The Algerines landed in Ireland in 1627, kiUed 50 
 persons, and carried off" about 400 into slavery. One 
 vessel captured by them was worth 260,000?. They made 
 purchases of stores and provisions they wanted in the 
 western parts of Ireland by Baltimore, and in 1631 carried 
 off" 100 captives from that town. They landed their poor 
 captives at Rochelle, and marched them in chains to Mar- 
 seilles. Twenty-six children are said to have been carried 
 off" at one time from Cornwall. In 1633 Lord Went- 
 worth, appointed lord deputy of Ireland, named noted pirate 
 vessels off" the coast of Ireland and their captures. Persons 
 
DUNKIRK AND NIEUPOET PRIVATEERS. 95 
 
 in their wills used to leave sums of money for redeem- 
 ing well-known captives from bondage in Algiers and other 
 places. Entries were made in borough accounts of ex- 
 penditure under this head ; e. g., — 
 
 " Lyme Eegis Town Accompt Book, 1623. 
 "Item, paid unto Mr. Nicholas Leate the 19 Sep. 1823, 19Z. \0s. 
 whereof was disbursed by the company's consent for ElUze Raphe 
 and his son, and Richard Showers and his son, for redeeming 
 them out of Algier, 4Z. 10«." 
 
 The fear inspired by these maurauders was general, and 
 natural enough to those who possessed intelligence. We 
 find the dread of pirates was carried into the business of life. 
 The course of human affairs was affected by it. R. Eburne, 
 of Henstridge in Somerset, wrote a work in the year 1634, 
 entitled " A plain Pathway to Plantations." The writer, a 
 man of great depth, recommends Newfoundland for eight 
 reasons. The second reason is, " Because it was most out 
 of the way o£ pirates." 
 
 An entry at Lyme in 1627 doubtless refers to pirates : — 
 
 " Paid Morren for beating the drum and watching all night, 6d." 
 
 The speech of Mr. Dannet Burgess for Yarmouth in the 
 House in 1601 upon the violence of the Dunkirk and 
 Nieuport privateers is very exciting. 
 
 The speaker asked how it was that such a number of her 
 Majesty's subjects be spoiled, robbed, beaten, wounded, 
 themselves taken, used with such extreme torture, racked, 
 carried away, imprisoned, ransomed, fined, and some executed, 
 and all this time no wars ? 
 
 " I dare boldly say it," he concluded, " they have done 
 England more hurt since they begun than all France, either 
 in the time of Henry VIII., Edward VI., or Queen Mary.* 
 
 After these statements of the existence of so great an evil 
 generally bearing upon the kingdom at large, let us turn to 
 its particular application to the western counties. 
 
 * Sir Simonds d'Ewes's Journal of Proceedings in Parliament in the 
 Keign of Elizabeth. 
 
96 SOCIVL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 The mayors wrote letters to each other, inviting all the 
 seaports to combine. A name frequently occurs in archives, 
 that of Mr. John Crewkerne, a solicitor who had been town- 
 clerk of Lyme Regis in 1619. He resigned that office upon 
 some misunderstanding as to the " duties necessary to be per- 
 formed." This lawyer lived in 1636 at Exeter. He was of 
 a good family of Childehay House near Crewkerne ; and was 
 entrusted with the direction of the important business now 
 treated of. The paper is entitled " A Copy of the Instruc- 
 tions given to Mr. John Crewkerne for Solicitation of the 
 Lords of the Councell and Petitioning His Majesty for Re- 
 dress against the Pirates, 23 July, 1636." * 
 
 23rd July 1636. — From Plymouth, it is advertised, that 
 fifteen sail of Turks were upon this coast, and had done 
 much mischief. The losses sustained from this source, as set 
 forth by letters from Plymouth, were as follows f : — 
 
 " The ' Dorothy ' of Dartmouth, of 80 tons, taken near Scilly about 
 a month since. 
 
 A collier of Axmouth coming with culm was chased by the 
 Turks, and very hardly escaped. 
 
 The ' Swan ' of Topsham set upon by two great Turkish men-of- 
 war near Scilly, and (the crew) were obliged to run ashore in 
 order to save themselves. 
 
 Divers fishermen to the number of 40 were taken. 
 
 The 'Lark' of Topsham, of the burthen of 80 tons, having 15 
 men and a boy, was lately taken, and the master slain. 
 
 The ' Patience ' of Topsham was taken two days after her 
 setting out on her voyage to Newfoundland. 
 
 The ' Eose-garden,' a barque of Topsham coming from Morlaix, 
 and having aboard her near one hundred fardels of white 
 ware belonging to the merchants of Exeter and other places, 
 and the barque, goods, and seamen carried away by them. 
 
 There are five Turks in the Severn, where they weekly take 
 either Enghsh or Irish, and a great number of their ships in 
 the Channel, upon the coast of France and Biscay, whereby 
 it is come to pass that our mariners will no longer go to sea 
 nor from port to port ; yea the fisherman dare not put to sea 
 
 * Sherren Papers. -j- Ibid. 
 
TURKS IN THE CHANNEL,. 97 
 
 to take fish for the country. If timely prevention be not 
 used the Newfoundland fleet must of necessity suffer by 
 them in an extraordinary manner. 
 The annoyances are principally by the pirates of Salee, which is 
 a place of little strength, and they might easily be kept in 
 if some few ships were employed to lye upon that coast." 
 
 His Majesty was therefore to be petitioned to have some 
 ships always stationed oif the bar-foot of Salee to blockade 
 the harbour and capture the prizes as they may be brought 
 home ; that a convenient number of nimble (fast-sailing) 
 ships may always be kept upon the Irish and this coast, 
 which may be victualled here and there without going for 
 that purpose to London or Portsmouth ; that a commission 
 may be granted to any of his Majesty's subjects to take 
 Turks and other pirates and dispose of them and their goods, 
 giving his Majesty his fifteenths.* 
 
 It is desired that in such ships as shall be sent to Salee 
 seamen may be appointed by his Majesty to be commanders. 
 
 The glaring inconsistency, as it is now universally admitted, 
 of sending officers of the army, not seamen, to command at 
 sea, was then the common practice. It is interesting to view 
 our western advance in civilisation beyond that of the 
 government, — to read the same practical advice tendered to 
 the executive upon a great naval matter. Boroughs in the 
 west are now far behind the government in intelligence. 
 
 The harbour of Salee, famed for its rovers, has been silted 
 up by the deposit of mud. 
 
 The following additional information was forwarded : — 
 
 " Since the above was written a ship was taken by the Turkish 
 pirates within three leagues of Dartmouth ; 5000/. loss was sus- 
 tained by Exeter besides the loss of the ship and the seamen. They 
 were likely to have sustained a far greater loss in three ships 
 coming from St. Maloes and Morlaix, but which ships escaped, 
 being near the shore. The merchants of the port towns are 
 utterly disheartened, nor can they get seamen ; who say ' they had 
 rather starve at home than be brought under the tyrannous and 
 Moorish subjection of those Mahometans.' " f 
 
 * Sherren Papers. f Ibid. 
 
 H 
 
98 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Mr. Adam Bennet, Mayor of Exeter, then the metropolis 
 of the west and a place of considerable trade, sent Mr. John 
 Crewkerne to the other mayors to cause them to unite with 
 Exeter and bear a part of the expenses. 
 
 The petition eventually drawn up was from Exeter, 
 Plymouth, Barnstaple, Dartmouth in Devonshire, Wey- 
 mouth, Melcombe Regis, Lyme Regis, and others the members 
 of those parts in Dorsetshire. 
 
 The petition dwelt upon Salee having become powerful in 
 addition to Algiers and Tunis. 
 
 The King answered that he had written to the Earl of 
 Northiunberland to provide against such damages. 
 
 Mr. John Crewkerne reported progress in a letter Septem- 
 ber 3. 1636 ; and describes the effect produced upon the king 
 by the several petitions entrusted to him. At their delivery 
 the king, striking his hand upon his breast, said, that whilst 
 he had breath in his body he would do his utmost endeavour 
 to advance so necessary and consequential a business ; and 
 that he was resolved to take such a course, as that within 
 these twelve months not a Turkish ship should be able to 
 put out of their harbours. 
 
 This active agent adds in a postscript : " The fleet are 
 ordered to come down, and will be with you the first fair 
 wind."* 
 
 The corporation of Exeter were agitating, September 21. 
 1636, the question of sending Mr. J. Crewkerne again to the 
 council and supplying him with 40Z. 
 
 It was proposed to procure a commission dormant for the 
 city of Exeter and aU other western ports, to set forth a 
 ship against Turks and pirates which shall be in the Channel, 
 and to press men if they cannot procure volunteers.! 
 Having no more borough extracts to give, one from a 
 biography of Lord Strafford will prove appropriate, as con- 
 firmation of the substance of the foregoing: — 
 
 " Among the redeeming qualities of Lord Strafford is included 
 his having secured the sea from piracies, so that only one ship 
 
 * Sherren Papers. •(• Ibid. 
 
ENGLISH PIRATES OF THE CHANNEL. 99 
 
 was lost on his first going to Ireland, and no more all his time ; 
 whereas every year before not only several ships and goods were 
 lost by robbery at sea, but also Turkish men-of-war usually landed 
 and took prey of men to be made slaves." * 
 
 Read Macaulay's description of the British Channel in 
 1689, how it was abandoned to French rovers. Our traders 
 hired Dutch privateers to protect them, and found this 
 more advantageous than to obtain the convoy of a man- 
 of-war, so immense were the bribes required to procure 
 this. 
 
 An annual gift of a few hundred pounds was paid to the 
 Emperor of Morocco for the protection of British trade and 
 the liberation of British captives, till about the year 1690. 
 The American government made a treaty with the Dey of 
 Algiers in 1792, and paid 5000Z. annually. 
 
 If the ancients are arrayed against the moderns, let us be 
 no blind partisans. Let fair truth prevail. Acting upon 
 this view, a statement is given, extracted from a petition to 
 the Admiralty from the Mayor and Bailiffs of Weymouth 
 so late as 1780. 
 
 Privateers, English-built, and chiefly manned with En- 
 glish and Irish smugglers, who are perfectly acquainted with 
 the coast, by showing English colours and hailing in En- 
 glish, have frequently eluded the vigilance of his Majesty's 
 ships. One Matthew Langrish, of Weymouth, master of 
 the " Union," of Weymouth, sailed 27th October from the 
 Downs with provisions for his Majesty's service at Plymouth, 
 under convoy of his Majesty's cutter " Viper." When 
 about six miles from Portland he was captured by a cutter 
 under English colours, which had just before passed the 
 convoy. During the four days that Langrish was kept 
 aboard the cutter privateer she captured four English 
 vessels between Portland and the Lizard. She was called 
 the " Civility," and was commanded by one Bennet, an 
 Englishman, having a second captain, Connor, alias Bachelor, 
 an Irishman ; and the major part of her crew consisting of 
 
 * See a Biography of Lord Strafford. 
 H 1 
 
100 SOCIAL HISTOEY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 British and Irish, with a French commission aboard. Priva- 
 teering leads to what is near to piracy. 
 
 The privateers of St. Malo have earned a great name for 
 boldness : they were much complained of at the beginning 
 of the eighteenth century, and came close off our western 
 ports. 
 
 The Mayor of Lyme, Mr. Nathaniel Butler, charges, 
 A.D. 1704-5, the sum of 1*. 8d., which he gave two men to 
 drink when two privateers were in sight. Mr. Nicholas 
 Newel in 1705-6 gave the man who watched 3s. The same 
 mayor paid INIr. Hart to pay the men for watching when a 
 privateer lay off the town, 16s. There is a charge for 
 Robert Puckett's horse-hire and expenses to Weymouth, 
 when a French privateer took a boat off the town, 9s. 
 There was given beer to the sergeants and others when the 
 guns were fired at a French privateer, and putting small 
 arms into the chest. Another of similar entries will enable 
 us to understand how troublesome these fast-sailing and fast- 
 rowing craft were long before steam was introduced. 
 
 1704, Gave the young men to drink when two privateers 
 were in sight. Is. 6(f. 
 
 The town-drum was beat in 1706, and the gun fired at 
 two privateers. No less than eighteen pieces of artillery 
 were sent down to Lyme, with shot, ladles, &c. 
 
 The arming of Towns. — Introduction of Ordnance. — 
 Musters. — Illegal Games. 
 
 Other than purely municipal matters and the quiet go- 
 vernment of our towns obtrude themselves upon the notice 
 of him who would record their annals before there existed 
 a standing military force or army, and when centralisation 
 had not attained its present importance. Our south- 
 western boroughs on the coast had not only to govern, but 
 to defend themselves, as frontier towns, against the enemy. 
 The mayor for his year had to superintend all kinds of 
 military duties, which were very complicated before the 
 
FORTIFICATIONS OF TOWNS. 101 
 
 weapons of the earliest ages had yielded to the arms of 
 modern times ; in a word, ere bows and arrows were dis- 
 used, owing to the introduction of great guns, or cannon, 
 fired with gunpowder, and the smaller arms, musketry, &c. 
 The mayor was captain of the soldiers, but appointed some 
 one under him to discipline and lead them. A mayor 
 unwilling to be troubled with the office turned the matter 
 over to the lieutenants of the county, who put in a cap- 
 tain.* 
 
 That Lyme was fortified seaward, according to the sys- 
 tem of the middle ages, at an early period, cannot be 
 doubted. There was, indeed, great occasion for protection 
 against a roving, plundering, and destroying enemy and 
 pirates, such as our coast so often suffered from. At what 
 precise time the coast towns were fortified, in the modern 
 acceptation of the word, having walls upon which cannon 
 were mounted, is uncertain. The archives of Lyme Regis 
 (excepting some charters, &c.) do not extend back so far ; 
 in some towns they are lost. The subject is of high in- 
 terest. 
 
 Many towns were fenced in with walls before the in- 
 vention of gunpowder. In 1262 Henry III. made a 
 murage grant ; that is, for the walling in (or repairing, as 
 was the case in this instance,) of Chichester. In 1266 a 
 similar grant was made for waUing in the town of Lewes. 
 A cart-load of iron paid Id. ; a horse-load of iron, ^d. ; a 
 cart-load of corn, ^d. ; a cart of sea-fish, Ad. ; 1000 her- 
 rings, Id. ; a load of brushwood, ^d. ; a tumbrel of squir- 
 rels, ^d. Thus the protection of property was effected by 
 a tax upon the industrious classes and on even the lowest 
 of the population.t This walling in of a town by way of 
 protection is not the fortifying a" town in the acceptation 
 attached to it when gunpowder was invented. 
 
 Many towns were not entirely surrounded by walls until 
 the time of Edward I. Many border towns were imperfectly 
 protected by fortifications before the fourteenth century. 
 
 * Foolscap sheet in the corporation archives of Lyme, 
 t See Horsfield's Histories of Lewes and Sussex. 
 H 3 
 
102 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Southampton was enclosed by walls in the reign of 
 Edward III., as a deed in the archives attests. 
 
 The mayor and burgesses of Poole were about to wall, 
 entrench, and fortify that town and port in the eleventh 
 year of Henry VI., 1433, being a town inhabited, as the 
 king's letters patent have it, by a multitude of people. 
 The king gave licence for the same ; and ordered that Mel- 
 combe should be no longer a port, but a creek, owing to its 
 being weak and insufficient, from the scarcity of people 
 there. 
 
 Bristol was fortified, in the modern acceptation of the 
 word, in the reign of Henry VI. That important city was 
 not left to the mere strength of walls and towers, but had 
 the means of keeping at a distance enemies assembled to 
 assail it. 
 
 There was 20 cwt. of gunpowder in store at Bristol in 
 the reign of Henry VI. The sum of 40Z. was to be laid 
 out there for the purchase of certain guns and " other stuff," 
 for the defence of the town. 
 
 A dozen brazen guns were to be made, shooting " peletts 
 as grate as a Parys balle or lesse, and every gonne with 
 iiij chambers." 
 
 Without reference to the invention and introduction of 
 modern artillery, we may not sufficiently estimate the merit 
 due to our borough worthies in regard to their choice of 
 new arms, and laying aside the former implements of de- 
 struction. A few lines will show us the several dates of 
 the introduction of the weapons of modern warfare. 
 
 Bombards were invented about the time of Edward III. ; 
 
 Old English Cannon, formerly in the Tower of London. 
 
 they were bars of iron hooped together. Cannon was a 
 name given from the chamber to admit the can, or canister. 
 
FORTIFICATIONS OF THE COAST. 103 
 
 The first cannon used in England was at the siege of Ber- 
 wick in 1405. Whether cannon was used at Crecy is very 
 doubtful. 
 
 The ship which carried Philippa, sister of Henry IV., 
 Queen of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, to her home, 
 A.D. 1406, had two guns, 40 lbs. of powder, and forty stones 
 for guns.* 
 
 In 1512 brass- ordnance was first founded by an English- 
 man. 
 
 Gunpowder was manufactured in England in 1412, but 
 not perhaps in large quantity, f 
 
 The first Englishman who made artillery of font metal 
 in England was John Owen, who in 1535 began to make 
 brass ordnance, as cannons, culverins, and such like, in Sus- 
 sex. The first cannon of cast iron made in England was 
 at Bucksteed in Sussex, the iron country at that time, in 
 1543.1 
 
 In 1573 there was a piece of ordnance at Edinburgh 
 three yards long and more, unstocked, which " shoteth a 
 stone bygger than a greate peny lof." This loaf was then 
 very large. § 
 
 It was enacted, 4 Henry VIII., 1513, that good and 
 substantial bulwarks, brayes, walls, and ditches were to be 
 made whenever the justices and sherifis (not officers skilled 
 in war) shall think needful. Such bulwarks were to be 
 erected in the lands of any persons without any manner of 
 payment to them (the many benefited at the unfair cost of 
 the few), and earth to be dug gratis ! 
 
 St. Catherine's Fort at Fowey was erected by the towns- 
 people in the reign of Henry VIII. 
 
 The same king erected block-houses in particular spots, 
 such as at Brownsea Island, at the entrance of Poole Har- 
 bour, in 1547, and furnished a whole culverin, a demi-cul- 
 verin, sakers, a portpiece with two chambers, a slinge with 
 
 * Ellis's Original Letters. 
 
 t Weale's Quarterly Papers on Engineering, vol. v. 
 
 I Stow's Annals. § Ellis's Letters. 
 
 H 4 
 
104 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEBN COUNTIES. 
 
 two chambers, a serpentine with two chambers, ladles, 
 sponges, powder, and shot. 
 
 The charge of maintaining the fort fell upon the town of 
 Poole. Inthe 4th of Elizabeth the town procured by petition 
 fresh cannon. Lyme Regis was most likely provided with 
 great guns by the king. At what time is unknown. The 
 fort called the Gun Cliffe was a well-known locality in the 
 reign of Henry TV., but only as Le Cliffe. There were no 
 guns for years afterwards. 
 
 It was in 1544 that the townsmen of Lyme beat off the 
 French vessels that made an assault upon the town, when 
 King Harry had made the voyage to Boulogne. This they 
 did at their own charge. It is not surprising that our prin- 
 cipal men took great pride in the " town gonnes." William 
 Tudbold,inl551,left 20s. to the " mainteynance of the same." 
 John Hassard, mayor, charges in his accounts the same year 
 one penny for two men " dressing the goones at Christmas." 
 A penny was the customary Christmas gift or box to the 
 gunners. 
 
 " Robert Willyams had paid to Mm to ' chute the'gones on May- 
 day, iiijrf.' " 
 
 In all our borough sea-ports the maintenance of the guns 
 and the due shooting the same at stated seasons, and when 
 great men, " the jentlemen, bethe in town," was a con- 
 siderable burden. The mayor and his brethren were glad of 
 an opportunity to relieve themselves and barter a share in 
 the immunities possessed by their borough for gunpowder. 
 William Pytte, merchant, of Weymouth, wished to enjoy 
 the advantages to be acquired at Poole. He agreed to re- 
 side at Poole upon the death of his mother ; and was made 
 a free burgess in 1583, upon payment of 2 cwt. of good 
 corn powder yearly, and for his absence, 20s. a year. 
 
 The bill for Melcombe to be fortified was read the first 
 time February 9. 1558-9.* 
 
 After escaping now from the violence of an enemy by 
 
 * Sir Simouds d'Ewes Journal of the Proceedings of Parliament. 
 
PEICES OF WEAPONS. 105 
 
 means of artillery, we should be led to reward the men who 
 served the guns, and that arm would ever find honourable 
 mention made of it by our grateful tongues. In Edward 
 VI.'s reign, however, the guns were a novelty. We trust 
 the men who served them were well rewarded; but a 
 feeling bordering upon veneration was at that time felt for 
 the very guns themselves. A raging enemy had been kept 
 from landing, and all the evils of former invasions, too well 
 handed down to them by their parents, averted. The old 
 man about to die reviewed his past career, and piously set 
 about the just disposal of his worldly goods. He judged that 
 when he should be under the sod more enemies might come 
 along the coast and harass those he had left behind, who 
 were very dear to him. King and country were much to 
 him; but his dear borough was more. He needed no 
 prompter to remind him of " the toun gonnes," and asso- 
 ciated them in his mind as being a terror to enemies that 
 would harm those he loved so well. 
 
 A proclamation, 3rd August, 1542, limited the price of 
 weapons as follows. Persons were empowered to enter into 
 men's houses, as a forfeiture of 10?. was laid upon those who 
 exceeded the price. 
 
 Bow, best sort 
 
 " second 
 
 " third 
 Sheaf of livery arrows - - - 
 
 Leaden case 
 Girdle 
 
 Sheaf of arrows, 8 or 9 inch the feather 
 Gross of bowstring 
 Demy lance, with cuirasse, vambrace, potren headpiece, 
 
 with a beaver - - - 45 
 
 Demy launce, called a Collyn cliff, ready made and 
 
 headed - - . 
 
 Arming sword for a horseman 
 Pair of gauntlets with joints 
 Ahnayn ryvett, best sort 
 
 " second 
 
 Javelin, best sort * 
 
 *. 
 
 d. 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 7 
 
 6 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
s. 
 
 d. 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 8 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 106 SOCIAL HISTOET OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Javelin, second ... 
 
 Fighting bill ready helved 
 Flemish halberd, best sort 
 " second 
 
 The yeomen of the guard of Henry VII. were armed half 
 with hows and arrows, half with harquehusses. Some men- 
 tion is made in a coming page of a drawing representing the 
 march of an army, in which armour and artillery appear, with 
 the callyver and long bow. Charges for bows and arrows and 
 guns appear mixed up in the same accounts. John Tudbold, 
 Mayor of Lyme in 1545, paid for " a bowe and sheiFe of 
 arrows, a present to Mr. Strangways, 5s. 4:d." In the same 
 account is a charge for sending a man to Weymouth about 
 gunpowder, Is, 6c?. In 1545 was also paid to " Wm. Deane 
 for a molde to cast the pellets in for the basys, lOd." A rate 
 in the corporation archives, in the reign of Henry VIII., is 
 labelled " The bill for the gon powder." 
 
 A piece of ordnance, or in other words, a great gun or 
 cannon, was purchased in London for the town by Roger 
 Garland, mayor 1550, when 10s. earnest money was paid. 
 It is a singular fact, that the piece of ordnance was carried 
 from London to Taunton, at the great charge of 43s. 2d. ; 
 the further charge from Taunton to Lyme was 8s. 
 
 This interesting fact clearly proves that at this date a 
 cannon could only have been conveyed into the west of 
 England by way of Taunton, the present route to Lyme 
 from London ; whether this arose from the want of brieves 
 in Dorset, Wilts, &c. The expense incurred was very con- 
 siderable. 
 
 In 1557, John Hassard, mayor, charges — 
 
 s. d. 
 2 yards of canvas to make bags to put gunpowder in, 
 
 and for the marking - - 110 
 
 35 lb. of big shot for the ordnance at 2d. the lb. - 5 10 
 
 Gunpowder was made on the Continent. 
 The maintenance of the town guns, in a word, the gar- 
 risoning Lyme by the corporation, was an expensive matter. 
 
LYME AND THE SPANISH AEMADA. 107 
 
 In 1597 the TownAccompt Book shows a heavy expenditure 
 for a small borough. There is under one head alone — 
 
 £ s. d. 
 2741b. of powder - - - - 14 14 
 
 One barrel - - - - 9 5 1 
 
 Among the " town stuff" to be used in case of need or 
 war's alarms was this formidable array: six bows; two 
 black bills, and two daggers.* The next year, 1560, wit- 
 nessed the addition of a pair of corslets complete. An act 
 was passed, 33 Henry VIII. cap. 9., that all persons under 
 sixty years of age were to have bows and arrows. Aliens 
 were not to practice archery, f 
 
 The town of Lyme and coast of the south-west of England 
 was for many years, at the close of Elizabeth's reign, a fron- 
 tier country towards an enemy greater by comparison than 
 Napoleon in modern times. Directly opposite West Dorset 
 lay St. Maloes, fuU of shipping, and Brittany, then in the 
 hands of the Spaniards. The hatred of our Dorset and 
 Devon countrymen was then almost entirely directed against 
 Spaniards. Philip of Spain had a navy of 140 galleys, 
 which interrupted the wine trade between England and Gas- 
 cony. While England had not one single battalion in con- 
 stant pay, PhiUp had a standing army of 50,000 excellent 
 troops. With these he had usurped Portugal, made con- 
 quests in the East Indies, and was a dangerous neighbour to 
 Guernsey and Jersey. Hence the expressions of alarm and 
 indignation at the Spanish nation, which was then looked 
 upon as the natural enemy of England. Our townsmen, who 
 witnessed the conflict between their countrymen and their 
 townsmen too, in their own town's ships or vessels, and the 
 proud Spanish Armada, in sight of Lyme, though without 
 spy-glasses, which had not been invented at that time, had 
 their animosity keenly excited against the Spaniard. Their 
 reluctance to march inland to distant musters can be readily 
 accounted for, as they left their town exposed to the enemy. 
 
 * Town Accompl. Book, a.d. 1559. 
 
 t Ten bow-staves had to be imported for every butt of malmsey wine 
 imported by an act of 1 Richard II. cap. 2. 
 
108 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Certain gallant active and forward citizens having had ex- 
 perience both abroad and at home, voluntarily exercised 
 themselves when the Spanish Armada was expected, and 
 trained others for the ready use of war. These 300 mer- 
 chants Stow speaks of met every Tuesday. 
 
 The following lines of Mr. T. B. Macaulay breathe the 
 spirit of excitement that men felt at the lighting of the 
 beacons, so bountifully distributed upon our coast hills : — 
 
 " For swift to east and swift to west the warning' radiance 
 
 spread — 
 High on St. Michael's Mount it shone — it shone on Beachy 
 
 Head. 
 Far o'er the deep the Spaniard saw, along each southern shire, 
 Cape beyond cape, in endless range, those twinkling points of 
 
 fire." 
 
 -^ 
 
 
 Beacon upon a Coast Hill. 
 
BEACONS. — BULWARKS. — FORTS. 109 
 
 The beacons set up in 1588 were partly of wood, and con- 
 sequently temporary. These are not to be confounded with 
 the beacons built in Charles II. 's reign. 
 
 There are in parish books charges in 1665-6 and 1678 
 for " carrying warrants about building the beacons." 
 
 A beacon built upon Trinity HiU, near Axminster, in 
 1678, cost 22/.; which sum was defrayed by the foregoing 
 and some other parishes. The erection of these stone struc- 
 tures is due to the plots and alarms which distinguished that 
 reign, and which appearing to be indefinite as to time, a 
 permanent provision was made for alarming the counties, 
 and not a temporary one, as in the remarkable example of a 
 Spanish invasion. 
 
 The dread of a foreign enemy was very great, and an 
 alarm in Mr. Ellesdon's mayoralty in 1595 gave rise to a 
 highly illustrative entry : — 
 
 " Item, paid for the carriage of a letter to Mr. Drake [of Ashe 
 House, in the parish of Musburyj to give him advertisement of 
 the Spanish ships, and to cause his parishioners to come hither 
 to help us, 4c?." 
 
 A bulwark, or fort, was constructed at the Cobb (where 
 at that time were no houses), by a spot called " Birch Door." 
 Rods, stakes, and seams of turves are charged for by William 
 Brooke. 
 
 The forts of many ancient maps, and bird's-eye-view maps 
 and drawings, are, like the church towers and castles of those 
 Tudor illustrations, purely conventional. The ordinary type 
 is a round tower, with two guns or more run out from the 
 first story ; with one or two guns, or more, mounted on the 
 flat roof en barbette. Some, as if for variety, have a parapet 
 embattled, others not. 
 
 Leland speaks of a similar earth or mud fort at Ports- 
 mouth.* Such constructions came into vogue from the 
 
 * He alludes to "amudde walle armed with tymbre, whereon be great 
 peaces of yron and brasse ordinanns. This peace of walle having a 
 diche without it." 
 
110 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 absence of splinters or pieces of stone when struck by shot. 
 Some details will explain what was done at the Gun Cliff, 
 Lyme, in 1595. 
 
 s. d. 
 Item, paid for three seams of straw for the mud wall at 
 
 the Clyffe, and for horse hier to carry the same straw 2 
 Item, paid to five workmen for the making up of the mud 
 
 wall at the clifi", for four days, at Sd. the day, and one 
 
 at lOd. the day - - - - 14 10 
 
 Item, paid for 2 horses, for two days, to tread the 
 
 mortar - - - - - 2 
 
 Five labourers to make mortar and 2 horses to tread 4 
 
 This mortar is the soft earth mixed with chopped straw, 
 such as in Devonshire obtains the name of cobb. 
 
 The Dorsetshire Musters of the sixteenth century, and 
 View of Armour and Weapons, are rendered doubly 
 interesting from the transition state of offensive arms, and 
 the clear exposition of the nature of the force that alone 
 existed to protect the country from invasion, and what 
 means they possessed for so doing. Extracts from the 
 Muster Papers, or Muster Books, in the archives of 
 Lyme, will exhibit much information of the chivalrous 
 marchings and display of weapons, and too often the 
 " faulty " state of the same when the justices and great 
 men visited the borough. 
 
 The first entry is a charge in 1558 — 
 
 s. d. 
 
 For a muster bill - - - 1 6 
 Riding to Hinton [St. George, the seat of the Poulett 
 
 family], to certify Mr. Poulett of the muster - - 6 
 
 Horse-hire to Hinton - - - 6 
 
 Man's trouble - - - - 6 
 
 The following abstract of weapons, &c., has partly ap- 
 peared in the Author's Introduction to the Yonge Diary, 
 
OrFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE WEAPONS USED. Ill 
 
 and has been made from a muster paper six feet long, en- 
 titled " A View of Armour and Weapons taken at Lyme 
 Eegis, the 6th April, in the 15th year of the reign of 
 Elizabeth, &c., by the mayor and his brethren of the said 
 town, as well of all the householders, their sons, journeymen, 
 and prentices, as also of all sojourners remaining within 
 the said town by vertue of a warrant directed from the 
 Lord Howard Viscount Byndon, William Lord St. John, 
 with other justices of peace within the said county of 
 Dorset." 
 
 No. of 
 
 Men. Offensive and Defensive Weapons each possessed. 
 
 1 1 had bows and sheaf of arrows, a steel cap and a bill, and a 
 sword and dagger. Some had either a corselet, a cur- 
 rion and a murrion, " more" (i. e. in addition), a callyver 
 and murrion, some a currion, a murrion, and a skull. 
 3 bows and 12 arrows each. 
 14 bills.* 
 9 pikes. 
 1 a biU and a pike. 
 1 a bill and steel cap. 
 6 sword and dagger. 
 3 sword, dagger, and pike. 
 3 curryons. 
 
 1 skull and a pike. 
 
 6 harquebuss and murrion. 
 
 2 harquebusses. 
 
 Two callyvers and 9 corslets were supplementary arms. 
 
 The following is an estimate of the charge for the buying 
 of eight pieces of ordnance, and the mounting and planting 
 of them with powder and shot convenient for the same at 
 Weymouth about the year 1582-3 : — 
 
 The very beadsmen learn to bend their bows 
 Of double fatal yew against thy state ; 
 Yea, distafi' women manage rusty bills." 
 
 Shahspeare's Richakd III. 
 
112 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Eight pieces of ordnance — £ 
 
 4 demy culverins 1 16 ^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^ _ _ 
 
 5 sacres J 
 
 2 cwt. of powder, at 51. the cwt. - - - 30 
 
 2000 shot, 10*. cwt. - - - - 10 
 8 carriages and wheels, with ladles and sponges and other 
 
 necessaries - - - - - 20 
 
 £140 
 
 Charge of the bulwark and platform, 2 in "Weymouth, 2 in 
 Melcombe, with 2 houses for the keeping dry the said 
 ordnance ... - - £Q0 
 
 The prices of the above and other armour were set 
 down : — 
 
 s. d. s. d. 
 
 Corslet - 30 A harquebuss - - 8 
 
 Callyver - - 20 A currion - - 16 
 
 A pike - - 2 A murrion - - 8 
 
 Bow and sheaf of arrows Head piece and lining 7 
 
 in 1545 - "54 Head piece - 40 
 
 A sword - - 6 Pair of drum-heads 4 
 
 A sword girdle - 12 Mould. 
 
 Barrel of gunpowder, £6 19 Flask and touchbox. 
 
 20 bullets - 2 Girdle. 
 
 The classification of the 186 men was not determined by 
 the weapons any one may have brought; for among the 
 pikemen were men who had only a bill and no pike. They 
 were classed as follows : — 
 
 30 pikemen. 
 
 16 archers. 
 
 49 harquebussers. 
 4 gunners for great ordnance. 
 1 the " drome " (a drummer). 
 
 17 billmen. 
 
 8 old men not serviceable. 
 
 Some sojourners, journeymen, and apprentices had no 
 arms, but were classed thus : — 
 
 * A loose sheet amongst the Sherren papers. 
 
COAST GUARD AND FOKTIFICATIONS. 113 
 
 11 pikemen. 
 27 harquebussers. 
 4 archers. 
 18 billmen. 
 
 In 1580 an account of the want of such armour as the 
 justices found lacking in Lyme Regis was taken : — 
 
 18 men with callyvers,. harquebusses, and currions wanted some- 
 
 thing or other : many wanted several things. 
 
 2 archers : one wanted a bow, dagger, and scabbard ; the other 
 
 wanted a skull. 
 
 3 corslets : one wanted a sword and dagger ; second, was faulty 
 
 in all ; the third, all un trimmed. 
 3 pikes : all faulty in all. 
 21 able bodied men were without weapons. 
 
 19 archers, callivermen, &c. were "not at home." 
 
 21 men of Stockland are entered on this muster paper as having 
 appeared at the same time : 21 are complained of as being 
 harquebussers without their harquelDuss ; and archers with- 
 out a bow. 
 
 In 1587 in a muster paper appears a list of those who 
 mustered, arranged under the head of the weapon they 
 wielded, opposite the names of those townsmen who fur- 
 nished the weapon. Here and there the names of towns- 
 men appear who served and furnished their own weapon. 
 To distinguish those who serve from the substitutes they 
 are called "soldiers." The Troop in 1590 consisted of 
 eight principal residents, who furnished their own weapons, 
 and are distinguished from the Trayns, as a cor'ps d'elite. 
 
 On the 12th March, 1587, several magistrates gave notice 
 that they were about to proceed along the coast from 
 Weymouth to Lyme, to view those places that were dan- 
 gerous in respect of the facilities they afforded for the 
 landing of an enemy. The mayors were to attend and 
 bring those persons skilled in fortification. Some remarks 
 upon this have been furnished in another place. 
 
 The warlike entries in the town accounts in 1595, on 
 the occasion of some of the town soldiers being pressed for 
 
 I 
 
114 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEKN COUNTIES. 
 
 Boulogne, exhibit a mixture of the ancient and modern 
 arms. 
 
 s. d. 
 Given to the souldiers pressed for BuUayn - 10 
 
 Item, for making clean of a corslett, sword, and dagger to 
 
 be sent for Bullen - - - - - 1 
 
 Ifem, paid for a pike for the corslett that was sent to 
 
 Bullen - .30 
 
 Item, paid for a horse to carry the harness, and for his 
 charges that carried the corslett and rest of the furni- 
 ture to Bridport - - - 1 4 
 Item, paid Varland for a mould to ca?t the shot for the 
 
 great ordnance - - - - 2 
 
 Half a hundred of Saker shot - . - 6 8 
 
 Powder to the value of 251. was now provided. 
 Item, paid for a staff" to carry the ensign on 10 
 
 „ two pounds of lead to put into the ensign 
 
 staff, and for a spear and a ring for the 
 same staff - - 1 8 
 
 Captain George Summers, afterwards Admiral Sir George 
 Simimers, marshalled the force of the town, consisting of 
 126 men, in May, 1598, when Sir Edmund Uvedall, knight, 
 viewed them. 
 
 The corslets were 4 ; musquets 48 ; callyvers 45 ; men 
 that bore only pikes 29. 
 
 Weymouth and !Melcombe had 187, Poole 106 men, armed 
 as above.* 
 
 In 1599 the bows and arrows finally disappeared from 
 the muster rolls, t The musket gained ground ; no more, 
 perhaps, by its value, than by the special recommendation 
 of the deputy lieutenants, 18th April, 1596, signed Sir 
 ^Matthew Arundel, Sir George Trenchard, and Sir Ralph 
 Horsey, " to encrease armour and weapon, especially corslet 
 and musket." Nichols writes, that at Leicester, the queen, 
 in 1598, ordered the bows and arrows to be refused and 
 supplied with muskets. 
 
 * Certificate of the forces of Dorset, Harleian MS. 3324. 
 "I" Five archers out of 145 men mustered in 1591. 
 
COMPLAINTS OF MUSTER MEN. 115 
 
 The following is an abstract of weapons at two several 
 dates : — 
 
 
 
 A.D. 1591. 
 
 
 A.D 
 
 . 1599. 
 
 Corslets 
 
 - 
 
 - 5 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 Callivers 
 
 - 
 
 26 
 
 
 
 49 
 
 Pikes - 
 
 
 - 6 
 
 . 
 
 
 6 
 
 Halberds 
 
 - 
 
 - 10 
 
 - 
 
 
 6 
 
 Bills - 
 
 - 
 
 - 8 
 
 - 
 
 
 7 
 
 Bows - 
 
 - 
 
 2 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 Sword and 
 
 dagger 
 
 - 1 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 Able men 
 
 without arms 
 
 - 49 Musketeers 
 
 65 
 
 107 169 
 
 It is a curious fact that Kurds, armed with bows and 
 arrows, were lately with Omer Pacha at Varna. 
 
 The Lyme muster men were summoned, 20th July, 
 1598, to appear at Bridport by eight o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, by Sir William Poulett, John Yonge, and Robert Wil- 
 liams, justices. The Marquess of Winchester, from Basing 
 House, directed the deputy lieutenants of Dorset not to 
 muster the Lyme men in any foreign shire, as they are 
 upon the sea-coast, and had been very forward in furnishing 
 themselves with armour and weapons; to have to march 
 many miles in our own country, when the terrors of the 
 enemy were so rife, and every step led away from the 
 locality the foe would first visit, became the subject of 
 special complaint. The train men occasionally mustered 
 about 1577 at Dorchester, Beaminster, and Bridport. Per- 
 mission to muster at Lyme was afterwards obtained; but 
 not permanently, for our townsmen were again required to 
 leave the town unprotected, and march to distant musters. 
 
 In 1623 Sir John Brown laboured to obtain a removal 
 of this evil, and Mr. Hugh Pyne, a counsellor, of Cathan- 
 ger, Somersetshire, was paid 3?. 14s. for the pains he and 
 his men had taken to free the townsmen from going out of 
 town to muster. 
 
 * Perhaps the musketeers were supposed to possess a coi-slet. 
 I 2 
 
116 SOCIAL HISTORY OP THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 We have spoken of the affection displayed by the good 
 townsmen towards the "town guns," that is, the guns 
 actually belonging to the borough. Their love for the 
 guns was probably diminished when the pieces of ordnance 
 were lent to boroughs on the coast by the crown. 
 
 The crown probably — it may be the townsmen them- 
 selves •^- deemed the sea-side batteries inefficient, and so 
 pieces of artillery that were serviceable were lent. 
 
 This first occurred at Lyme in 1625, when five ])ieces 
 of ordnance were delivered to Sir "Walter Erie. This fact 
 is recorded by an entry of the payment of certain fees, 
 which, in keeping with the times, amounted to 12Z. A 
 bond was sent up to the king as security for the ordnance 
 so lent. 
 
 With our improved modern views, how strange does it 
 appear that the defence of a tract of the country at large 
 should have been left to the burgesses of a little town upon 
 the coast. The whole country was interested in the repulse 
 of a proud foreign enemy, and should have borne equally 
 its share of the burden. However, this injustice was cor- 
 rected in part in 1625. 
 
 The charges at Lyme on this occasion were : — 
 
 Five pieces of ordnance delivered to Sir Walter Erie 
 and sent down. The fees 
 
 A bond sent up to the king, as security for the ord- 
 nance, in a box, charged - 
 
 Powder and match . - ■ 
 
 Two axles for the brass piece and for two tomkyns 
 and other necessaries 
 
 Six pounds of shot 
 
 Freight of the ordnance from London 
 
 It is to be remarked that the next year, viz. 1626, some 
 ordnance was conveyed from London to Lyme by land, 
 by what route is not known, the charge for which was 
 26/. 6s. Id. 
 
 The military preparations along the coast continued. At 
 
 £ 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 9 
 
 3 
 
 15 
 
 
 
e 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 
 
 THE "BUKROW" AND ITS POET. 117 
 
 Lyme the borough prepared for what must be deemed a 
 little war. There is an entry of — 
 
 The two drummers at the muster 
 
 Two men bearing the town musquets - 
 
 To a cutler for making clean the arms 
 
 To Robert Sweet for one day's service with the flute 
 
 The town ensign cost in 1628, with 3s. for lines 
 
 In 1627 great activity was manifested at Lyme and 
 at other parts of the coast. In the Yonge Diary, p. 106., 
 is stated, " There being difference between this state and 
 France, we began a fortification at Seaton for the defence 
 of that place [six miles west of Lyme] against pirates and 
 other enemies." The magistrates of that neighbourhood. Sir 
 Edmund Prideaux, Sir William Pole, Mr. John Drake, 
 Mr. Fry, and Mr. Walter Yonge, granted warrants for 
 the hundreds near, and even rather distant ones, to send 
 some thirty, others twenty men, for a week, or else pay for 
 men at the rate of 8rf. a day for each man. Thus was 
 thrown up upon Seaton beach the great mound of earth, 
 which cost 24/., now called the " Burrow," by corruption 
 for the " Barrow." A fort was constructed on the summit. 
 No one knew in 1845 how it came there ; which proves 
 how tradition often fails to perpetuate the recollection of 
 really important transactions. 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 1627, Baronet Seymour [perhaps Sir Edward Seymour, 
 who was to have his companies of trained soldiers, 
 like other gentlemen named, ready to march for Ply- 
 mouth, in 1622, at an hour's warning] gave towards 
 the fort at Lyme - - - - -500 
 
 Several persons, Mr. Anthony Ellesden gave 30s., Mr. 
 William Davy, 20s., &c., to the building of the fort 
 [I believe the " Stoning, or Stone Fort," west of the 
 sea, front of the town, towards the Cobb] - - 3 17 8 
 
 Dinner to Sir Walter Erie when he came hither about 
 
 the fort - - - - - 6 8 
 
 When a country had to be defended by the walls of a 
 
 I 3 
 
118 SOCIAL HISTORY UF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 borough, which had to be erected and maintained by the 
 burgesses themselves, technicalities about rating, and the 
 rights of certain residents, produced the effect that will ever 
 occur where the respective obligations of each individual 
 are not accurately defined. "Whatever reasons predomi- 
 nated, some persons persisted in refusing, while the contri- 
 butions of others amounted to 31. 18s. 8d. in subscriptions, 
 ranging from 2s. to 30s. each. 
 
 The parties who refused were not allowed to remain 
 quietly. An entry in 1628 will show this : — 
 
 s. d. 
 Paid to Mr. Richard Harvey, that he paid in London to 
 solicit the Lord Suffolk to get an order to compel them 
 to pay towards the building of the fort - - 3 5 
 
 The butts were at Millgreen. William Whetcomb 
 gathered 7s. 4rf. to make the butts in 1555. Again, in 
 1557, 12s. are charged for the cutting of turfs, and carrying 
 them home, and for making the butts. 
 
 In 1569, May 2nd, a jury at the court of hustings pre- 
 sented, as a grievance, " that there is to much bowling and 
 to little shoting." 
 
 There was doubtless some alarm of enemies, for the 
 same jury expressed their anxiety for the safety of the 
 town, by precepting the mayor : " Item, that Mr. Maior 
 do cause our ordnance to be in a readiness and placed, and 
 also to see all such powder as hath been lent out to be had 
 in by Whitsunday next, or be fined 40s." * In the followino- 
 year, 1570, it was ordered that Mr. Mayor do cause to be 
 mended the butts at the Millgreen, upon pain of 10s. 
 Complaint is again made, in 1571, that "to much unlawful 
 games are used and no bowes exercised." The mayor, in 
 1578, was directed by the court leet, under pain of 10s., to 
 see that every man have and exercise artillery (z. e. bows 
 and arrows) according to the statute : In which particular 
 all were found faulty in 1581. At Castle Combe many 
 
 " The corporations of boroughs on the coast lent gunpowder to each 
 other. 
 
ARCHERY V. UNLAWFUL GAMES. 119 
 
 were fined, in 1576, 6s. 8rf. each for not exercising bows 
 and arrows. The fine was reduced to \2d. each. The 
 constables were to search every month to see if the people 
 had bows and arrows. Every one, from seventeen to 
 sixty, was to procure bows and arrows.* 
 
 The unlawful games in the reign of Edward IV. were 
 dice, " coyts," and even football. They were doubtless ob- 
 jectionable, not of themselves, but for their consequences, 
 as will be shown in allusion to a later reign. 
 
 In 1542 (33 Henry VIII. cap. xi.) the bowyers, fletchers, 
 stringers, and arrow-head makers, finding their occupation 
 affected by the introduction of other arms, procured an 
 " Acte for Mayntenance of Artyllerie and debarring of un- 
 lawful Games, such as Logating in the Fields, Slide-shrift, 
 otherwise Shovegrote. No one was to keep a common 
 house or place of bowling, coyting, cloyshe cayles, half- 
 bowle, tennys, dysing, table or carding, or any other manner 
 of game prohibited." This is a good specimen of class-legis- 
 lation. Our countrymen adopted a better kind of arms ; 
 those who continued to make a decidedly inferior kind pro- 
 cured the enactment of laws which aimed at doing away with 
 most of the sports with which men recreated themselves, 
 hoping by such an exclusive system to drive men to archery, 
 so little was liberty understood in the reign of the Tudors. 
 Only a few years from this date religious feeling prompted 
 to a suppression of all games and sports : such a feeling did 
 not enter into the question at this time. 
 
 The admirer of the game of cricket will desire to learn 
 something about its introduction. It does not figure among 
 the unlawful games, for it was first mentioned only about 
 the year 1719.t 
 
 Stow exclaimed " our bows are turned into bowls." And 
 before him Bishop Latimer, in one of his sermons preached 
 before Edward VI., indulged in indignant reclamations against 
 the disuse of archery. Historic recollections gave to the use 
 
 * Hist, of C. Combe, by G. P. Scrope, Esq. 
 t Timbs's Cur. of London. 
 I 4 
 
120 SOCIAL HISTOKY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 of the bow and arrow in his eye so very great importance, that 
 the good bishop eulogises it as a gift of God for us to excell 
 all nations withall. The art of shooting he styles " God's 
 instrument whereby He hath given us the victory against our 
 enemies." Without noticing the "musquet," the bishop de- 
 sired the lords, even as they loved the honour and glory of 
 God, and intended to remove his indignation, to send forth 
 some sharp proclamation to the justices of peace, because 
 they did not perform their duty. He desired the lords to 
 charge the justices upon their allegiance that this singular 
 benefit of God be practised and not turned into bowling, 
 glossing, and dicing within the towns. After an account of 
 his father's teaching him to shoot, and the increase of his 
 bows and arrows according to his strength, the bishop winds 
 up with this sentence : " It is a godly art, a wholesome kind 
 of exercise, and much commended in physic." 
 
 The clergy of this reign, wiser in one respect than the 
 good bishop, leave our gallant men in the field to the use of 
 the Minie rifle and Colt's revolvers, if they do with their 
 professional skill determine that with these they can act 
 with greater effect offensively and defensively. 
 
 By a statute made 33 Henry VIII. it was enacted " that 
 none under the age of seventeen should shoot with a bow 
 of yew, except his parents were worth lOZ. per annum 
 in lands, or 40 marks in goods; and for every bow made 
 of yew, the bowyer not inhabiting London or the suburbs 
 should make four, and the inhabitant there two, bows 
 of other wood."* 
 
 The constables of Lyme in 1577 made this presentment, 
 " that sometimes there be divers merchants and other honest 
 (i. e. honourable) men that doth bowl as foUoweth : — 
 
 Ricliard Baret, Eiohard Davey, 
 
 John Jurden, Nicholas Hassard, 
 
 William Semens (?), with others. 
 John Bellamy, 
 
 Some persons used the butts on the Sabbath day, which 
 
 • See Xotes and Queries, Sept. 20. 1851. 
 
PINES FOR UNLAWFUL GAMES. 121 
 
 caused a presentment in 1581, as being contrary to a 
 statute. It was added on the file of presentments, " Item, 
 for artillery so many Sundays." 
 
 Bowling was the great offence in the eye of the authori- 
 ties. Thirty bowlers were presented in 1596. 
 
 On 2nd October, 1598, were presented, upon the evidence 
 of the constables, Peter Brown and others, who were players 
 at tables on 26th May. Each was fined \2d. * 
 
 John Gosse, the last man who mustered with " bow and 
 arrow," was presented for playing ad tabulas — at tables. 
 
 John Somers, John Thornton, and others were similarly 
 fined as players at cards. * 
 
 In 1602 no mechanic at Castle Combe was to play at un- 
 lawful games unless he could spend 40s. a year.f 
 
 There were presented as bowlers Richard Lamberton, 
 II William Davy, Anthony Moone, Robert Bragg, John 
 Vyney, Thomas Kelke, William EUesdon, jun., Thomas 
 Clarke, John Herridge, Nicholas Perrat, Thomas Diggens, 
 Robert Amarsh, || Silvester Jurdeyn, Nicholas Daye, 
 Robert Breholt, Andrew Davy, Nicholas Holcomb, Robert 
 Davy, sen., John Spering, Philip Stansby, Ynes Winter's 
 servants, John Sprake's servant, and Robert Barnes, jun. 
 
 Each was fined \2d.: they were "common bowlers." 
 Those with || before their names were actually on the jury, 
 whose names are appended, f 
 
 Kobert Barnes. Thomas Pears. 
 
 James HiU. Thomas Whitford. 
 
 Richard Roze. William Legg. 
 
 William Jurdeyn. Henry Palmer. 
 
 George Pley. Robert Collens. 
 
 Walter Tucker. PhiUip Harvey. 
 
 Silvester Jurden. WiUiam EUesdon. 
 
 William Davy. William Hill. 
 John Kerridge. 
 
 Richard Sommers and Thomas Clarke, who were pre- 
 
 * In 1600 such offenders were fined 6s. 8d. 
 ' \ Hist, of C. Combe, by G. P. Scrope, Esq. 
 i The bowlers in 1600 were fined 6s. 8d., according to the statute. 
 
122 SOCIAL HISTOEY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 sented at the same time for fighting and drawing blood, were 
 fined dd. each. 
 
 In 1567, at Castle Combe, butchers' shops were of aU other 
 places the special resort of gamblers, who made the meat 
 before them the stake for which they played. Butchers 
 who allowed this were to be fined Qs. Sd. 
 
 Having shown that what detracted from archery was ex- 
 posed to punishment under statutes made to support and 
 encourage the same, it should be added that the butts at 
 Lyme, being out of order, furnished matter for a presentment 
 ia 1601. They were repaired in 1633 at the cost of 1/. 
 
 Bows and arrows appear no more in the muster papers 
 after the year 1599. 
 
 The exact time when long bows were disused is unknown ; 
 but in 1621 it was moved in Parliament to repeal some regu- 
 lations, as " guns be now the service of the state, and long 
 bows obsolete." Arrows were shot by the English at the 
 isle of Ehein 1621.* 
 
 Bows and arrows are much lauded in a proclamation sent 
 forth in 1633 for their service, by which great victories were 
 gotten in ancient times ; and then the praise turns from 
 victories to their use, by the exercise of shooting to preserve 
 health, strength, and agility, and by which we avoid idleness, 
 unlawful disports, and such like enormities. The train 
 bands were at this time to learn an exercise invented by an 
 ancient archer, William Neade, who used the pike and bow 
 together. The same veteran invented a new quiver for the 
 arrows. He had begun to teach the service to the Artillery 
 Company of London. 
 
 The author has a drawing of the march of horsemen in 
 complete armour, both man and horse ; footmen with cally vers 
 or harquebusses fired with a slow match or cord, artillery on 
 wheels drawn by horses, and companies of archers armed 
 with the long bow. This drawing is from a MS. of about 
 the time of Henry VIII. 
 
 There is an entry of a presentment of a jury at Lyme in 
 1648, which will be judged to be more extraordinary as that 
 * A\'eale's Quarterly Papers on Enj.'ineering. 
 
BEHAVIOUR OV SOLDIERS. 123 
 
 town stood a dreadful siege in 1644 for seven weeks, and was 
 defended by Admiral Blake against Prince Maurice. To 
 crown all, we give a presentment of the court leet, 8tli May, 
 1660: — 
 
 " And that there are no butts within the parish of Lyme Regis, 
 and there have been none here by the space of 3 months last 
 past, for which the inhabitants of the said parish have forfeited 
 the penalty in the statute mentioned, viz. 205. And nevertheless 
 it is ordered that the inhabitants of the said parisli shall make 
 and set up butts there before next court, under the further pain 
 of 20s." 
 
 In the reign of Charles II. some attempts were made by 
 the nobility to revive archery. 
 
 The arms that the Duke of Monmouth brought for his 
 rebellion in 1685 were partly offensive partly defensive. 
 Backs and breasts were stored at the Town Hall, and were 
 captured by the captain of the frigate that was in pursuit of 
 the duke. These do not appear to have been valued. De- 
 fensive armour was just going out of use. 
 
 The Royal Scots guard, commanded by the Earl of 
 Orkney, had not at Anne's accession adopted the use of fire- 
 arms; they wore heavy steel caps, and used bows and 
 arrows, with broadswords and targets. 
 
 The Behaviour of Soldiers upon the March and in Quarters. 
 
 We can hardly realise the fact of a country being taxed 
 to make good the wanton spoil and damage committed by 
 soldiers, our own countrymen, marching through in time of 
 peace. Such was however the case. 
 
 Richard Chafin, of Sherborne, informed the magistrates at 
 the Easter sessions, 1629, that at the last removal of his 
 Majesty's soldiers out of the county of Devon towards 
 London, he had two horses (being all he had, and of more 
 value than his estate besides) taken from him \i. e. im- 
 pressed], and employed for the removal of the said soldiers 
 and their armour from Sherborne ; and one of these horses 
 
124 SOCIAL HISTOEY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 was by the soldiers killed outright, the other spoilt, and by 
 their means long kept from him [taken away towards 
 London to be sold, though ultimately recovered], to his 
 damage of five pounds at the least, for which he is without 
 remedy. Humbly moved to commiserate his case and afford 
 him some relief out of the treasury of the county, the court 
 ordered the treasurer of the western division to pay Richard 
 Chafin for the loss and damage which he had sustained in 
 his horses. 
 
 As the troops marched through the country in 1588, the 
 year of the Spanish Armada, they sold their arms as they 
 went, falsely alleging that they had received no pay and 
 were obliged to do so. See the proclamation sent forth by 
 the queen denying the truth of the soldiers' statement. 
 
 The soldiers sometimes enacted a bloody tragedy. The 
 Wellington murder is a terrible example. One hundred and 
 sixty soldiers, lately pressed in the county of Devon, were on 
 their march towards the north, at the town of Wellington in 
 Somersetshire. There they murdered one of their officers, 
 Lieut. Compton Eyres, and dragged his body about the 
 streets. Having thus brutally behaved themselves, they dis- 
 banded. A proclamation was issued in 1 640, calling upon the 
 authorities to seize these men and naming several of them. 
 
 At the beginning of the Diary of Walter Yonge, Esq., of 
 Colyton, the writer states that the plagues of England are 
 noted by figures in the margin. In recording the coming 
 down to Plymouth of 10,000 soldiers in 1625, the writer 
 forgot not to draw a rose in the margin, marking soldiers as 
 one of the greatest plagues of the country. During their 
 stay all kinds of violence abounded. Under modern disci- 
 pline the people of an invaded country suffer less than did 
 the counties formerly at the hands of their own countrymen 
 in arms. The Lyme men knew the sad inconvenience of 
 this, and used means to avert the evil, which the accounts 
 partially disclose. We find an entry in 1625 : " Given to the 
 ensign of the soldiers for avoiding the town, 1/. Os. id." At 
 the same date the town clerk was sent to come to an under- 
 standing with the officers fifteen miles from the borough. 
 
CONDUCT OF SOLDIERS IN THE STUAET ERA. 125 
 
 " To Mr. Carpenter, for hia' journey to Beatninster, for avoid- 
 ing the soldiers, 3s. 6d." " Mr. John Seward, for his journey 
 to Dorchester about the soldiers, 5s." In 1626 an entry 
 appears thus : " Given to Capt. Gylpen for passing his 
 soldiers by the town, and for entertaining of himself and his 
 wife and five soldiers, \L Is. lie?." 
 
 In 1627 the sum of 21. 7s, Id. had been paid at Lyme for 
 expenses incurred by the inarching of some soldiers through 
 the town. This is followed by another entry : " Item, more 
 than could be collected towards hose, shoes, and shirts, and 
 conduct money, and horse for them to Bridport, 8s. 2d." 
 Again the same year, " Coat and conduct money for the 
 soldiers, 30s." 
 
 The "setting forth" soldiers to Guernsey in 1593 occa- 
 sioned charges to be incurred for which a rate was levied 
 upon Lyme, amounting to 6?. 10s. &d. Some paid 5s. 5d., 
 others only Zd. and 2d. 
 
 Mr. Ellesdon, the Mayor of Lyme, charges 11. Is. 6d. 
 about setting forth the expedition to Cales (Cadiz) in 1597. 
 There is another entry for the same, 10/. 15s. Od. 
 
 These are the matters which caused towns to wish the 
 wars were over, and spread dissatisfaction with the conduct 
 of the affairs of the country. 
 
 "Well might our forefathers declaim against a standing 
 army. How different was the behaviour of the soldiery in 
 the Stuart reigns to that which characterises them in the 
 present century ! When soldiers were in the country we 
 read of outrages and disorders. After Monmouth's rebellion 
 some soldiers of Lord Cornbury and Lord Churchill's troops 
 of dragoons broke into a house at Colyton, and stole bone- 
 lace worth 325?. There were disorders at Bideford, and 
 Lord Weymouth wrote that his neighbours at Frome and 
 Warminster were in dreadful apprehensions. The licence 
 was shameful. The conduct of Trelawney's regiment in 
 Shaftesbury and Sarum was atrocious. Captain Wolseley en- 
 couraged his soldiers to toss the Mayor of Scarborough in a 
 blanket, and said he would make him know that the military 
 power was above the civil. Thomas Coad, in his Memoir, 
 
126 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 records how a party of soldiers found him at an ale-house 
 wounded, and how brutally they treated him in order to ex- 
 tort money for the payment of their debauch. 
 
 Complaints were made to the House of Commons in 1695 
 that some military men did not pay their quarters at 
 Royston, alleging that their own pay was in arrear. This 
 affair was of great importance, as it led to an inquiry into 
 corrupt practices, which were universal through all the de- 
 partments of government. The secretary of the Treasury 
 was proved to have taken 200Z. for procuring or expediting 
 the payment of arrears due to a regiment. Col. Kirke, of 
 western fame, had a regiment on the books which was by a 
 fiction marching about Ireland; but it had no bone and 
 muscle, — it existed only on paper. With such plunder — 
 for pay was drawn for officers and men — handsome hush- 
 money could be well afforded to procure freedom from ex- 
 posure at the hands of officials who knew of the wicked- 
 ness. 
 
 Wounded Veterans pensioned by the Counties. 
 
 Instead of old, worn-out men, who had fought their 
 country's battles for years, being supported from the finances 
 of the country at large in whose cause they had bled, 
 counties were left to provide for their natives as if the war 
 had been for the interest of a particular county. 
 
 In 1634 Lord Viscount of Valentia certified the good 
 conduct in the wars of William NichoUs, who had become 
 decrepit. The Court thereupon ordered 3Z. a year to be 
 paid by the treasurer of the county of Dorset, in quar- 
 terly payments, with a quarter's pay in hand. Thus the 
 county of Dorset was taxed to pension a man who had 
 served the country at large. If it happened that many men 
 of any particular county went to the wars, the burdens of 
 the county might have been increased to a great degree. 
 Hence officials would in some cases be led from pecuniary 
 motives to discourage the going to the wars, lest a pension 
 might be required to be furnished. 
 
PILGRIMAGE TO ST. JAGO. 
 
 127 
 
 Nath. Heme, of Netherbury, had 40«. a year granted 
 him for his services and wounds.* 
 
 Pilgrimage to St. Jago de Compostella. 
 
 Ship of the Time of Richard II. ( Harl. M S.) 
 
 "Than longeth folk to go on pilgrimages, 
 And palmers for to seken strange strondes 
 To serve halwes couthe in sondry londes." 
 
 Chaucee. 
 
 The rush of great numbers of persons from the country 
 to our sea-port towns in the fifteenth century, in order to 
 take ship as pilgrims to the holy shrine of St. Jago de Com- 
 postella, partook of the character of a mania, which possesses 
 a nation in some form or another from time to time, in reli- 
 gious as well as in temporal matters. 
 
 This special rage, however, for the pilgrimage to Spain, at 
 
 * MS. Book of Dorset Se?sions. Mr. Hearn, " Qui Quondnm.' 
 
128 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 one epoch, must not be allowed to call off our attention from 
 a much earlier period. 
 
 Pilgrimages to St. Jago were established in the time of 
 Kichard I., who, when on his way through France, stopped, 
 like another Hercules, to punish evil doers. Lord William, 
 of the castle of Chisy, was a marauder who spoiled pilgrims 
 on their way to St. Jago. The lion-hearted monarch took 
 the castle and hanged the offender on the spot.* 
 
 The Cinque Ports in 1243 loudly complained to the king 
 that the French were masters of the Channel. Not only was 
 fishing interrupted, but the carrying pilgrims to St. Jago 
 was entirely prevented. This trade the shipmasters de- 
 clared had brought them much profit, as well as the carrying 
 pilgrims to Canterbury by water from distant counties, f 
 
 Valorous Crusaders and peaceful pilgrims to the Holy 
 Sepulchre at Jerusalem were held in especial honour. 
 Danger from enemies, men of other nations, mere marauders, 
 and from the infidels themselves, the perils of the distant 
 voyage, arising from storms and rocks, and the great expense 
 made such a pilgrimage to all a serious and to most persons 
 an impossible undertaking. 
 
 AVith a view to meet the exigencies of the time the Pope 
 decided that a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Jago de Com- 
 postella, the capital of Gallicia, in the north-west corner of 
 Spain, should be of equal virtue with a voyage to Jerusalem. 
 Here was an inducement to the religious devotee, to those 
 who had money, leisure, or were under a vow, to benefit their 
 soul at a quarter-peril and a quarter-cost ! The offer was a 
 splendid one. It proved irresistible. 
 
 The bodies of St. James, the patron saint of Spain, and 
 those of two of his disciples, Athanasius and Theodoras, 
 were to be adored in a subterranean altar, 
 
 A series of religious ceremonies had to be performed 
 at this Mecca of Spain ; which the Baron of Rosmital duly 
 entered upon at his visit in the year 1466, an account of 
 which is now extant. 
 
 Our English pilgrims landed, and had a journey of thirty- 
 
 * Hoveden. f M. Paris. 
 
PILGKIMAGES TO SPAIN. 129 
 
 five miles to perform before arriving at the shrine. The 
 exciting effect of the usual processions was increased by a 
 military display, which gratified the pilgrims generally, and 
 quieted the fears of the less resolute. An armed escort, 
 ostensibly to guard the devotees from the Moslems, gave a 
 semblance of oriental warfare and perils to the undertaking, 
 which might otherwise have appeared tame and insipid. 
 Probably many viewed the whole as a miserable substitute 
 for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and rejoiced at anything 
 which savoured of alarms from infidels, and as requiring the 
 protection of the knights of a military order. 
 
 These redoubtable knights formed the military order of 
 St. Jago, who undertook to protect the pilgrims on their 
 way to the shrine of their patron saint from the violence of 
 the Moslems. All the pilgrims were not able to do battle 
 in their own defence ; for whole families formed themselves 
 into large parties, like caravans over the desert, and wended 
 their way to their Mecca, carrying the young and infant 
 children with them, transported with the resistless spirit of 
 the time. Each party must have unsettled every locality 
 through which they passed. Their chants — their banners 
 — the blessings of the priests — their taking an oath before 
 the mayors of the seaports — the crowds of spectators — their 
 distant voyage, if going — their mirth and satisfaction and 
 merry songs, if shrived and returning, — must have proved 
 irresistible. Some Religious were jealous of St. Jago ; and 
 we find Charles V. procuring for the Abbey of Mont St. 
 Michel from the Pope permission to grant indulgences to 
 induce the faithful to make pilgrimages to that abbey, and 
 to present donations, because it was consacre au prince des 
 anges, et de ce qu'il a ete honore de miracles eclatans* 
 
 Parties on their pilgrinvage to Spain must have roughed 
 it on the voyage and journey, as all travellers had to do in 
 that day. The vessels that conveyed them were very small. 
 No doubt the pilgrims made of the hold upon the ballast a 
 hall for meals and a dormitory. 
 
 * Dr. Hairby's Mont St. Michel. 
 K 
 
130 SOCIAL HISTORY OP THK SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 In the year 1428 eleven towns sent 926 pilgrims : 122 
 went from Weymouth, and 90 from Dartmouth. In the 
 year 1433 the numbers had increased to 2480. 
 
 The names of owners and masters of vessels who received, 
 from the year 1413 (1 Henry V.) to 1456 (34 Henry VI.), 
 licences to transport pilgrims to St. Jago de ComposteUa 
 are given in Rymer's Foedera. 
 
 The vessels are named bargese, crairerse, balingerae, and 
 naves. Who shall distinguish these ? 
 
 There are inserted in the list the names of some great 
 men who went to the Holy Land, in order to prove that it 
 was possible to do so at that date, and that the shorter 
 voyage was with few exceptions the only one made for 
 forty-three years. 
 
 The seaports from Yorkshire to Somerset furnished the 
 vessels for this brisk summer trade. The Cobb, or harbour 
 of Lyme Regis, had been destroyed. 
 
 Some vessels received a pilgrim for every ton of measure- 
 ment besides the crew, others were not so crowded. 
 
 A.D. 1413. Edward, the son of the Earl of Devon, appears first in the list of 
 those who obtained a license to take the number of 40 pilgrims, 
 in the Margaret of Plymouth, a bargea. 
 
 Pilgrims. 
 Richard Stonard — Edward of Fowey.* 
 
 Rich. HiU 40 Leonard of Weymouth. 
 
 J- Joy - 50 Helen of Ipswich. 
 
 ■T. Russel of Powey 50 - Mary of Penzance. 
 1415. Rich. Nicholl - 80 A balinger, caUed Leonard of 
 
 Weymouth. 
 1423. John Gower 60 
 
 1426. WilEam Bowes Miles had licence to go to the Holy Land with 
 his senrants. This worthy was probably not satisfied with the 
 compromise of going to St. Jago. 
 Henry, Bishop of Winchester, had licence to go beyond sea with 
 such attendants as shall appear necessary to pay his tow which 
 be made to perform certain pilgrimages, as he said. 
 Pilgrims. 
 1428. Thos. Buk 40 Thomas of Dartmouth. 
 
 J-™'P 120 Holy Ghost of Weymouth. 
 
 Wm. PoUard 40 Mary of Plymouth. ■"- 
 
 - Called a navis. The pilgrims might be shipped at Powey or Falmouth. 
 
A LIST OF PILGRIM SHIPS. 
 
 131 
 
 Pilgrims. 
 
 
 - 60 
 
 Falcon of Tarmouth. 
 
 20 
 
 Mary of Ipswich. 
 
 100 
 
 St. John of Bristol. 
 
 140 
 
 Mary of Cley. 
 
 masters 140 
 
 George of London. 
 
 1 owners 
 
 
 '«J 100 
 
 Mary of Bristol. 
 
 50 
 
 Mary of Fowey. 
 
 30 
 
 Mary of Exeter. 
 
 T - 50 
 
 Trinity of Dartmouth. 
 
 - 80 
 
 Nicholas of Poole. 
 
 A.r. 1428. Rob. Boner 
 
 Thos. Asteley 
 Thos. Fysh 
 Nich. James 
 Hugo Dere j 
 Rob. Shadde J ' 
 Wm. Coton 
 Jordan Sprynge j 
 John Monke 
 Thos. Adam 
 Bich. Davy 
 John Stanbury - 
 John Davy 
 
 1431. John Bishop of Bangor, 7 persons, 8 horses and harness, to visit 
 the Holy Sepulchre, in performance of a vow. 
 
 Pilgrims. 
 1433. John NicoU, owner 50 Cok John of Powey. 
 
 12 Henry VI. So that the pilgrims are laymen, and the mayor 
 takes a corporal oath from each that he will do nothing 
 prejudicial to the king. 
 
 1434. 
 
 Pilgrims. 
 
 
 , J. Heddon 
 
 40 
 
 St. James of Kingswear. 
 
 Koger Broke 
 
 60 
 
 St. John of Portsmouth. 
 
 J. "Williamson 
 
 40 - 
 
 Michael of St. Michael's Mount, 
 
 J. Lye - - - 
 
 40 
 
 Anthony of Dartmouth. 
 
 Eich. Pette 
 
 
 
 Wm. "Wenard T 
 
 , „ , '.owners 
 
 J. Cole J 
 
 i 50 
 
 Margaret of Topsham. 
 
 T. JaudreU 
 
 60 
 
 Mary of Landhelp. 
 
 Eoger Cule 
 
 40 
 
 Trinity of Bideford. 
 
 Thos. Marshall - 
 
 30 
 
 Catharine of Hull. 
 
 Henry Hawkin - 
 
 30 
 
 Mary of Brixbam. 
 
 J. Woderoufe - 
 
 80 
 
 Christopher of Bristol. 
 
 R. Walter 
 
 60 
 
 Peter of Dartmouth. 
 
 J. Bigbrook 
 
 100 - 
 
 Mary of Southampton. 
 
 Eich. Noble 
 
 60 
 
 Mary of Blakeney. 
 
 William Truwe - 
 
 60 
 
 Garland of Cromer. 
 
 John Burden 
 
 40 - 
 
 Trinity of Wells. 
 
 John Slug 
 
 60 
 
 Thomas of Saltash. 
 
 Eich. Lindesay 
 
 30 
 
 John of Teignmouth. 
 
 John Godyng 
 
 30 
 
 Thomas of Dartmouth. 
 
 John Lysard 
 
 40 
 
 Catherine of Dartmouth. 
 
 Hugo Dene 1 1 
 ^ = „ owners 
 J. Eyffawe J 
 
 
 
 -80 - 
 
 Gabriel of London. 
 
 Robert Shedde, master 
 
 
 
 K 2 
 
132 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 
 
 Pilgrims. 
 
 
 A.D. 1434. 
 
 Rob. Porter - 
 
 60 
 
 Trinity of Wiuchelsea. 
 
 
 Thos. Gerard 
 
 - 60 
 
 Julian of Fowey. 
 
 
 J. NicBoU - 
 
 - 80 
 
 Michael of Penzance. 
 
 
 J. Kydeston 
 
 50 
 
 Bartholomew of Landhelp. 
 
 
 Thos, Crouch 
 
 - 60 
 
 George of London. 
 
 
 Wm. Heustas 
 
 30 - 
 
 Nicholas of Weymouth. 
 
 
 Wm. Weston 
 
 60 
 
 Trinity of Bristol. 
 
 
 John Papenham 
 
 80 
 
 Mary of Bristol. 
 
 
 Roger Kyng 
 
 - 40 - 
 
 Catherine of Minehead. 
 
 
 John Gerard 
 
 40 
 
 Trinity of Exmouth. 
 
 
 J. Gobbe 
 
 40 
 
 Nicholas of Barnstaple. 
 
 
 J. Colman 
 
 - 30 
 
 Lawrence of Dartmouth. 
 
 
 Rich. Russel 
 
 - 20 - 
 
 Peter of Great Yarmouth. 
 
 
 John Deken, owner 
 
 . (so 
 
 
 
 Nich, Holswell, masti 
 
 Christopher of Ipswich. 
 
 
 Rob. Bowen 
 
 - 70 
 
 Bernard of Poole. 
 
 
 Rob. Gregory 
 
 - 20 
 
 The Ghost of Bishop's Ljim, 
 
 
 Thos. Andrew- 
 
 60 
 
 Bartholomew of Harmch. 
 
 
 Rob. Selbj - 
 
 - 30 
 
 Helen of Colchester. 
 
 
 Wm. Sutton 
 
 50 
 
 Nicholas of Sandwich. 
 
 
 John Mower 
 
 60 
 
 Michael of Poole. 
 
 1435. The Earl of Oxford had a licence to go to the Holy Land, and 
 take lOOZ. with him. 
 
 1445. 23 Henry VI. At the request of Philip Courtenay, knight. 
 
 ^60 
 
 Pilgrims. 
 John Godyng 200 
 
 John Lysard - 50 
 
 Rob. Stormy - 200 
 
 John Shipley, owner 
 Thos. Hygges, master 
 Thos. Colbere 140 
 
 Wm. Wakelyn 120 
 
 Rob. Phihp 80 
 
 John Mower 30 
 
 John Staube 40 
 
 John Gerard 140 
 
 Thos. Kestall - 50 
 
 John Herchin 100 
 
 Daniel Cosyn 60 
 
 John StappUhyll - 40 
 Henry May 120 
 
 Nicholas Wandi-e, and J 
 Roger Amys * i 
 
 Trinity of Courtenay. 
 Anthony of Dartmouth. 
 St. Anne. 
 
 St. Catherine of Plymouth. 
 
 Mary Carew of Dartmouth. 
 Margaret of Wells. 
 Mary of Cromer. 
 Mary of Lymington. 
 James of Landhelp. 
 Nicholas of Dartmouth. 
 Trinity of Falmouth. 
 Mary of Courtenay. 
 Michael of Penzance. 
 George of Payton. 
 Mary of Bristol. 
 Nicholas. 
 Christopher of Saltash. 
 
 One of them to take in 1 00 pilgrims. 
 
A LIST OF PILGRIM SHIPS. 
 
 133 
 
 1445. The Earl of Oxford had built The Jesus of Orwell. This craft 
 was licensed to take as many as would go. 
 
 Pilgrims. 
 John Fyke 
 
 — Hugo 
 
 — Langakre 
 
 — Hastyng 
 Thos. Vathy 
 
 — White - 
 John Gurdeler, master 
 
 of a crairera 
 David Selby 
 J. Stobbe 
 Rich. Felawe 
 John Burton 
 "Walter Fylpot 
 
 1446. Reginald West, miles to the Holy Land. 
 
 1448. Lord Scales, having been preserved for 30 years in the wars, desires 
 to pay a vow in the Holy Land. 
 
 50 
 
 James of Weymouth. 
 
 30 
 
 Motyn of Fowey. 
 
 60 
 
 Little John of Sandwych. 
 
 28 
 
 Grace Dieu. 
 
 40 - 
 
 Margaret of Mountsbay. 
 
 40 
 
 Mary of Falmouth. 
 
 30 - 
 
 Peter of Exeter. 
 
 40 
 
 Catherine of Plymouth. 
 
 40 - 
 
 James of Landhelp. 
 
 (12?) 
 
 
 12 - 
 
 Bartholomew of OrweUHa 
 
 100 
 
 Catherine of Bristol. 
 
 
 
 Pilgrims. 
 
 1451 
 
 . Rich. Skilman 
 
 30 
 
 
 Simon Hagun 
 
 60 
 
 
 Rich. Arnald 
 
 60 
 
 
 J. Waynflete 
 
 30 
 
 
 W. Humfrey 
 
 80 
 
 
 W. Bourchier - 
 
 40 
 
 
 J. Pygot - - 
 
 30 
 
 
 J. Paten 
 
 100 ■ 
 
 
 W. Cobbe 
 
 24 - 
 
 
 E. Burgony 
 
 40 
 
 
 R. Stormy - 
 
 100 
 
 1455 
 
 . 34 Hen. VU. 
 
 
 
 Peter Gytton, 47 tons 
 
 50 
 
 1456, 
 
 . Jno. Marshal, 80 tons 
 
 50 
 
 
 John Weston^ - 
 
 60 
 
 
 John Towcker 
 
 
 
 The pilgrims now took an oi 
 
 
 the secrets of the i 
 
 realm. 
 
 
 Pilgrims. 
 
 
 Philip Alene, 100 tons 
 
 30 • 
 
 
 Thos. Calbot, 100 tons 
 
 100 
 
 
 Vincent Pyttesdon, 100 
 
 
 tons 
 
 30 - 
 
 
 Simon Famcombe - 
 
 80 
 
 
 John Cade, 50 tons - 
 
 20 
 
 Mary of Southwold. 
 Trinity of Wyneton. 
 Mary of Cromer. 
 Christopher of Southwold. 
 Trinity of Orwell. 
 Trinity Fitz Waryn of Barn- 
 staple. 
 Catherine of Bishop's Lynn. 
 Margaret of Blakeney. 
 Mary of Pembroke., 
 Nicholas of Wells. 
 Catherine of Boston. 
 
 Herring of Lymington., 
 Jesus of Brixham. 
 Trinity of Dartmouth. 
 
 oath before leaving not to divulge 
 
 Mary of Dartmouth. 
 Mary Calbot of Lynn. 
 
 Mary Flower of Plymouth. 
 Helen of Winchelsea. 
 John of Dartmouth. 
 
134 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 A.D. 1456. 
 
 Pilgrims. 
 
 
 Thos. Tregyn, 140 tons 100 
 
 Mary of Fowey. 
 
 James, Earl ofWiltshire, 
 
 
 his ship, with 30 at- 
 
 
 tendants 
 
 James of Weymouth. 
 
 Rob. Sturmy, merchant 60 
 
 Catherine Sturmy of Bristol. 
 
 Thos. Clement - 60 
 
 Mary of Landhelp. 
 
 John Merchant 40 
 
 Mary of Stonehouse. 
 
 Wm. Brown 80 
 
 Edward of Blakeney. 
 
 "Wm. George, 200 tons 80 
 
 Andrew of Plymouth. 
 
 Going on pilgrimage was one of the characteristic features 
 of the fifteenth century — an age of superstition ; which in 
 this instance blended joUity with pomp and religious cere- 
 monial. A short sea-Toyage with such gay parties to a 
 shrine so famous, whose virtues were so lauded, in the fine 
 weather season, too, must have held out irresistible charms. 
 The pilgrims were a motley group. With some doubtless 
 religious performances, for with a few the soul's good 
 had some weight ; animal enjoyment and novelty entirely 
 prevailed with others, to the exclusion of all spiritual 
 considerations. 
 
 Thorpe the Lollard told the archbishop that whosoever 
 were to examine twenty of the pilgrims of his day he would 
 not find the man or woman that knew scarcely a command- 
 ment of God, nor can say their Paternoster and Ave Maria, 
 nor their Credo readily in any manner of language. The 
 reason he affirmed why many men and women go hither 
 and thither on pilgrimage was more for the health of their 
 bodies than of their souls. 
 
 A scallop-shell marked the person who had made the 
 pUgrimage to St. Jago de ComposteUa ; as a palm did the 
 pDgrim to Jerusalem ; and a leaden ampulla, or bottle filled 
 with the diluted blood of St. Thomas a Becket, suspended 
 from the neck, him who had been to Canterbury. 
 
 The two great shrines of Europe, St. Jago de Compo- 
 steUa and Loretto, have been visited by a body of armed 
 pilgrims in this century who were their own knights. 
 
 Marshal Ney, in 1809, advanced upon St. Jago, and 
 seized upon the treasures, which only amounted to 40,000Z.; 
 
A PILGRIMAGE TO MONT ST. MICHEL, 135 
 
 of which the marshal reserved one-half to pay his troops. 
 The gold statue of St. James was found to be only of brass 
 gilt ; and the diamond eyes only imitation stones. 
 
 Loretto dared to show some resistance to Bonaparte, 
 who gave it up to his soldiers for a pillage of twenty-four 
 hours. 
 
 Pilgrimages were wont to be imposed as punishments. 
 The consistorial court of the Bishop of Rochester sentenced 
 one Agnes Sharpe to make a pilgrimage to the Rood at 
 Bloxley, and to carry in procession, on five Lord's days, 
 a lighted taper, which she was to offer to the image of the 
 Blessed Virgin, for having voluntarily changed the name of 
 her son at confirmation to Edward, who had been christened 
 Henry.* 
 
 If the representation of the old pilgrimages exhibited 
 m the merry excursions to St. Jago de Compostella had 
 become by comparison contemptible and a degenerate 
 display,Fso did the summer or early autumn pilgrimages to 
 Mont St. Michel, when compared with the trips to Spain. 
 
 These pilgrimages, continued to the era of our Common- 
 wealth and later, present a curious compound. Family 
 pride, religious observance, military display, jollity, an aping 
 reality and for it substituting a farce,— all are exhibited in 
 a detailed account, here abridged, of an excursion made to 
 Mont St. Michel in the autumn of 1654. 
 
 Few such pictures of manners exist as that conveyed 
 in the following account of a journey to Mont St. Michel 
 by the Brotherhood or Guild of the Church of St. Peter of 
 Caen, with twenty-two ecclesiastics, and many inhabitants of 
 the other parishes, of which Monsieur Pierre de Rosirignan, 
 eldest son of Monsieur de Chambay, governor of the town 
 and castle of Caen, was the captain.f 
 
 The distance traversed by this party is about seventy- 
 
 * See Edinburgh Review, April, 1855. 
 
 ■)■ See the Appendix to a Journal of a Residence in Normandy, by 
 J. Augustus St. John, Esq., in Constable's Miscellany, p. 289., from an 
 ancient and rare book of travels : Caen, " Chaud le Blanc." 
 
 K 4 
 
136 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 five miles in a direct line, while the pilgrims to Spain had 
 thirty-five miles only of land journey. 
 
 The pilgrimages to St. Michael's Mount had genuine 
 earlier ones for their prototype. Not possessing a diary 
 of any original excursion to Spain, we must content our- 
 selves with the imitation afforded in the time of our 
 Commonwealth. There will be abundant room to observe 
 the many and remarkable features of such a strange jumble 
 of opposite qualities of the mind and the state of society. 
 
 " Learn how on Sunday, the 6th day of September, 
 1654, the standard-bearer of our captain and the pilgrims 
 went to meet him at the barrier of the chateau of Caen. 
 Then they proceeded in order to the church of St. Peter. 
 On the way to which the Lord of St. Martin, a doctor in 
 theology, who having been invited to that pilgrimage by 
 the brotherhood, and by other considerable persons, went 
 to meet them, and conducted them to the said church, where 
 the Veni Creator was sung. Then the ecclesiastics 
 marched before the captain; who, preceded by the trum- 
 peters of his father and of the town, marched covered with 
 a coat richly stuffed with a gilded gorget, his sword at 
 his side and his pike on his shoulder. Then marched a 
 number of pilgrims, four and four ; and then was carried a 
 beautiful large flag, on which was painted a pyx. Saint 
 Michel, the arms of our King (of the pilgrims chosen for this 
 excursion), of his Highness of Longueville, of this town, and 
 of our captain. Seven drummers, with red campaign coats 
 ornamented with silver lace, given by our captain, kept 
 continually beating. 
 
 " The Lord of Menil, our major, assisted by six sergeants, 
 each with a white scarf, likewise a present from our captain, 
 sword by their side and halberd in their hand, led the 
 company in such fine order, that at each step every one ran 
 to see them. 
 
 " At Hoyers an ample repast was given by the Lord of 
 La Linette, lieutenant of a company in the Castle of Caen. 
 The entertainment was agreeable ; for, besides the pleasure 
 of hearing the drums and trumpets, our captain had a 
 
A PILGRIMAGE TO MONT ST. MICHEL. 137 
 
 chariot of six horses, which carried excellent wine, venison 
 pasties, and other provisions, to which the Sieur la Mon- 
 tagne, maitre d'hotel of M. de Chambray, had added aU 
 that he could find in the hotels, which he visited early.* 
 
 " Monday, the 7th of September, we set out from La 
 Blanche Maison, and went to sleep at Villedieu, which is 
 almost six leagues distant. Our quarter-masters always 
 arrived the first ; they made presents to the principal minis- 
 ter of the church where we wished to say our prayers ; 
 they reserved places at the hotels, and, if there were not 
 enough to lodge us, they sent us among the citizens, con- 
 formably with the permission which our captain had from 
 his Highness of LonguevUle. The inhabitants of Villedieu 
 came to meet us, so very impatient were they to see so 
 fine a company, composed of almost two hundred persons. 
 Having arrived, we entered the church, which is a com- 
 mandry of Malta. They sent an officer of the said church 
 to meet us, and a priest received us at the door. The 
 music was sung by our twelve musicians, led by the Sieur 
 Guilbert, who everywhere received great praise for it. 
 We set out in order from Villedieu, and went to Avranches ; 
 on the way to which town, some one having said that the 
 Lord of St. Martin had just seen the Mount St. Michel, 
 immediately our captain and all the company cried out, 
 ' Long live the King ! ' caused the drums to be beaten, 
 and trumpets to sound, and they all drank to the health 
 of the King ; then our captain gave him one of the trum- 
 peters and two sergeants, and permitted him to have the 
 drums beat, and order aU. things the rest of the journey. 
 The King thanked him and the company for having made 
 him 'king.'t 
 
 * The extent and luxury of pilgrimages in early times almost exceed 
 belief. Nine hundred camels were employed merely in bearing the 
 wardrobe of one of the caliphs, and others carried snow with them to 
 cool their sherbet. — ^Bkodeeip's Note Book of a Naturalist. 
 
 f From Avranches to the mount is a distance of thirteen miles. 
 St. Benoist in his Chronicle writes — 
 
 " De St. Michel Tangle des ceux, 
 Sos ciel n'en eust nulleu si bel." 
 
138 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 " A quarter of a league from Avranches we halted to 
 form in good order, and it was judged proper that the 
 King, who was clad in a short cassock of taifety, and car- 
 ried a cane in his hand, should ride into the town on one 
 of his horses, and that he should be preceded by the said 
 trumpeter, and be accompanied by two sergeants. 
 
 " On the way one of the attendants of M. de Canisy 
 came to salute our captain on his part, and to beg him to 
 make use of his house, and that they should fire the cannons 
 at his arrival, as they had done when the company ap- 
 proached the town. Our King mounted a horse ; conducted 
 us to the cathedral, where they were singing the office of 
 the Nones ; afterwards he begged that the vespers may not 
 be contiaued as usual, but that they would allow the music 
 to be sung, which was immediately granted. 
 
 " Our own musical performance over, we took some refresh- 
 ments at the hotel, but lightly, on account of the strong 
 desire which every one experienced to arrive at the mount; 
 and it was amusing to see every one go on the shore 
 the best manner he could. The King there chanted the 
 litanies of the Virgin, and saluted St, Michel in invo- 
 cating that saint ; then he took one of the pistols from a 
 cavalier, which he fired opposite the mount, and bid the 
 company advance. On arriving there they fired from the 
 guard many musket-shots, and the soldiers formed them- 
 selves into a lane. 
 
 " The next day, the 9th of September, they rose early, 
 impatient to see the church, although they were told the 
 evening before that no one is permitted to enter till after 
 seven o'clock. Every one was charmed in considering such 
 a beautiful and vast church, built on the top of a rock, 
 with a very spacious abbey, governed by thirty reformed 
 Benedictines. Before entering it our captain presented a 
 crown of silver to the King, who thanked him, and imme- 
 diately caused the drums to beat ; and we marched from the 
 foot of the mount as far as the church. Many had left 
 their knives at the hotels, for fear that the guards at the 
 gate would take them away as usual ; but, on consideration 
 
A PILGRIMAGE TO MONT ST. MICHEL. 139 
 
 of M. de Chambay, they searched nobody, and even per- 
 mitted our captain and his officers to wear their sword, 
 which is very seldom granted, for fear least any should 
 seize the place ; moreover, they fired, on our arrival from 
 the castle, all the cannons ; and our King having entered 
 the church, he chanted three times Sancte Michael, ora fro 
 nobis ! 
 
 " The company said the responses with much devotion. 
 He said afterwards the night prayer, and prepared to say 
 the mass, which was chanted in music, as that at the parish 
 of St. Peter's of Caen ; then the company continued in 
 their devotions. He went away thence to see the relicks, 
 which are in very great number, and very precious. On 
 coming out some monks led us in parties to see their abbey, 
 where they provided breakfast for the Bang, for our Cap- 
 tain, and for a great many of our company." 
 
 Among other wonders of the abbey the narrator men- 
 tioned the cisterns for collecting rain water. He con- 
 tinues : — - " They share it with the pUgrims and the in- 
 habitants of the place, who are almost aU hotel-keepers, or 
 sellers of chaplets and shells. As we left the mount they 
 fired the cannons, and the officers payed great civilities to 
 our captain. Having returned to Avranches, where we 
 arrived in good order, Mon. de Canisy came to look for our 
 captain at the hotel ; invited him and our king to sup at 
 his house, where they invited the nobility of the town to 
 a well-served table, and where they drank to the health of 
 Monsieur the Governour of Caen, amidst the roar of all the 
 cannon of the place." 
 
 Judge from the above example how completely our south- 
 coast towns must have been disturbed by the arrival of 
 foreign and homeward-bound pilgrims. Fancy the scallop 
 shells worn for ornaments — in fact, as pilgrims' medals ; 
 the children, wives, and sweethearts hastening to receive 
 the little presents in shell-work and chaplets. 
 
 The pilgrimage to Mont St. Michel was performed, as 
 clearly appears, in style. Honours like the venisqn pas- 
 ties and the wine attended the guild wherever they went. 
 
140 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Unlike the eastern pilgrimages, no vultures followed, — no 
 bleached bones of men and beasts marked the route that 
 had been taken. 
 
 To the latest day of their lives all remembered so festive 
 a week. Not every party could have enjoyed so much 
 pomp and circumstance as the one recorded here. The 
 question obtrudes itself " Did the party believe this excur- 
 sion was efficacious for the soul ? " We believe " Not so " 
 would be the answer. 
 
 Nothing is recorded of the accommodation for the sleep- 
 ing of numerous pUgrims, as at Canterbury, in the dor- 
 mitory, of a hundred beds. At some of the great fairs in 
 Normandy, held in places distant from towns, booths or 
 tents, with a great number of beds, are set up. Persons 
 arriving at the fair order their bed, and at the ringing of a 
 bell aU retire at the same time, and rise at the same hour 
 in the morning. PUgrims doubtless were accommodated in 
 numbers together in some such way. 
 
 Numbers now assemble from the neighbouring country 
 at St. Jago to celebrate the festival of their patron saint 
 St. James, July 25. Fireworks and processions attract, in 
 the absence of other, the former inducements. When the 
 Spaniard speaks of what we call a picnic — the setting 
 out into the country well provided with a good store of 
 eatables — he uses the word romeria ; that does a double 
 duty, expresses picnicing and pilgrimage, as exchangeable 
 terms. Persons of high family are stiU anxious for their 
 admission to the order of St. Jago; but as pilgrims no 
 longer require protection, they take the honourable dis- 
 tinction as a proof of their high descent. Thus does age 
 cause nearly everything to depart from its early use and 
 application. 
 
OFFICE OF EAELT MATOKS. 141 
 
 The Importance of the Office of early Mayors. 
 
 " Each many a year 
 The helm of this town's government did steer," &c. 
 
 Epitaph of the Ellesdons. 
 
 Each mayor and his brethren formed in reality a board of 
 guardians, a board of health, of trade, and a provincial legis- 
 lature. Did they not manage the poor, regulate about what 
 caused sickness and the treatment of the diseased, settle 
 prices of commodities, define what number of attorneys should 
 practise, and prescribe how trade should be carried on and 
 how it should be fettered, and fix punishments for new 
 offences ? 
 
 Their bye-laws, if not wise, were so accounted, and were 
 in accordance with the progress of social economy. They 
 were alive to the presence of new domestic evils, and pro- 
 ceeded to correct them by Precepts and Orders. The pur- 
 suivant that brought a proclamation furnished the local 
 legislators with work, as did also the bad character who dis- 
 played some manifestations of a new or disused vice. 
 
 It was not only against positive acts that bye-laws were 
 framed, but indications of moral error occasioned the pass- 
 ing of these to meet the threatened outbreak. We now 
 punish for acts, but do not presume to conclude what is the 
 true indication of a design to do wrong, should opportunity 
 offer; and many mean actions are left to the contempt and 
 scorn which they deservedly bring upon the perpetrators. 
 Our predecessors, the authorities of Castle Combe, in the 
 fifteenth century, fined a man Ad. for lying about with in- 
 tention to ravish women. They likewise presented eaves- 
 droppers, or listeners at windows ; a mean class, whose 
 character would, after proof of such a habit, be now left to 
 the ridicule of being compared to that of " Paul Pry."* 
 
 All persons not members of a borough were accounted 
 aliens or foreigners. These were impeded in trading at 
 every step, and were treated much as if they owned allegi- 
 ance to some foreign king. Their dues were higher, their 
 
 * Hist, by Right Hon. P. Serope. 
 
142 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 facilities less, and they could only buy after freemen had 
 viewed the merchandise and declined to purchase. Persons 
 who for a consideration passed off the wares of out-of-town 
 traders as their own in order to evade these exactions were 
 heavily fined : their ofience was styled " colouring foreigners' 
 goods." When freemen were contumacious in respect of 
 the laws of their borough they were suspended, and lost 
 their freedom and the privileges and immunities it secured. 
 Thus did the inhabitants of a borough repay themselves for 
 the expenses and the responsibilities they incurred. It was 
 but fair that the legislators, the entertainers of great men, 
 the providers of ordnance and gunpowder, the payers of 
 rates to send burgesses to the Parliament, should have some 
 return beyond inhabitants of the country, who had no such 
 burdens. Each borough was truly an imperium in imperio. 
 Like other institutions, boroughs have played their part, 
 and have been modified so as to have lost much of their 
 former character. The central government has eased the 
 mayors from many of their duties. They are no longer 
 legislators, directors of the defences of their borough, and we 
 know not what besides. The performance of these duties, 
 however, is provided for in a way suited to the state of 
 civilisation that now obtains. Old mayors had duties for 
 which no directions had been prescribed ; they were left to 
 their own judgment, like a Turkish cadi, and much ready 
 ability and conduct was often demanded from them, and that 
 not in vain. 
 
 The state intermeddled with everything. Xothing was 
 left to the prudence and self-government of the people. 
 Such is not the case now-a-day. Still matters are conducted 
 in an improved manner that indicates constant progress. 
 Mr. Macaulay treats of this, and asserts that it has not re- 
 sulted by the intermeddling of the state, but by the pru- 
 dence and energy of the people which has carried England 
 forward in civilisation ; and to the same prudence and energy 
 we look forward with comfort and hope : " Our rulers will 
 best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly 
 confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, by leav -■ 
 
A LITfeiOUS PERSON. 143 
 
 ing capital to find its most lucrative course; commodities 
 their fair price ; industry and intelligence their natural 
 punishment, by maintaining peace, by defending property, 
 by diminishing the price of law, and observing strict economy 
 in every department of the state. Let the government do 
 this : the people will assuredly do the rest." 
 
 May the political economist find in the following pages 
 material for inferences from the economic experience of early 
 reigns. Nothing was then left to self-government. 
 
 The mayors were excusable. They carried out the orders 
 and laws of the state, and had, from the multiplicity and 
 variety of duties, a prominence that causes us to view them 
 as very remarkable men. 
 
 A Litigious Person punished. 
 
 The jurisdiction of the county magistrates, either assumed, 
 or which of right belonged to them, gave them a power, that 
 was at times exercised in the correction of gross abuses and 
 acknowledged social evils, that no law can be made to reach; 
 whereas they addressed themselves to the offence, and ad- 
 judged summarily. Take, for instance, the case of a litigious 
 dweller and oppressor of the inhabitants of Piddletrenthide. 
 We learn from it, that the people looked to the magistrates 
 to relieve them from the most out-of-the-way instances of 
 personal annoyance, oppression, or social disturbance. We 
 will illustrate this from the business of the Sherborne Easter 
 sessions, 1650. 
 
 " Divers credible persons, inhabitants of Piddletrenthide 
 and others, upon oath complained of many great extortions 
 and intolerable abuses by colour of law, practised by one 
 John Bryne of the same place ; whereby he had drawn many 
 to great expenses in law, upon frivolous sviits of no value, 
 and such whereupon he had received satisfaction at the least 
 twelve years before his suit commenced, and to the utter 
 undoing of others, whom (for fear of going to prison at his 
 suit) he hath caused to enter into bond for payment of debt, 
 long since discharged, to the general vexation of aU his 
 
144 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 neighbours and others that ever had any manner of dealing 
 with him by buying, selling, renting, or otherwise, sometimes 
 making justice a pretext for his unsufferable exactions." 
 
 The picture of the offender is repulsive. His career was 
 arrested ia a manner calculated to have made the magistracy 
 very popular, for the court ordered that John Bryne be com- 
 mitted to the county gaol, there to remain without bail or 
 mainprize by the space of three months, and from thence till 
 he shall put in two sufficient sureties, good subsidy men, 
 that will be bound in fifty pounds a-piece, and he himself in 
 a hundred pounds, to the king's Majesty's own use, upon 
 condition that he shall in time to come well behave himself 
 towards the king and aU his liege people. But in case that 
 he give full satisfaction to all such persons as he hath un- 
 justly wronged, and that now have complained against him, 
 then upon putting in of security this court doth think fit he 
 be discharged of his imprisonment.* 
 
 A Discontented Politician suffers. 
 
 A PROOF of religious feeling in favour of a party, and the 
 danger of rash spouting on political matters, are given in 
 an entry made at the Michaelmas quarter sessions held at 
 Beaminster, a.d. 1625. 
 
 " It is ordered by this court that John Barton, for using 
 manie contemptuous wordes agaiast the king's proclamation 
 conceminge Jesuits and Recusants (and selling ale without 
 a license), in saying he wished halfe of them hanged which 
 procured the saide proclamation, is committed to the House 
 of Correction untill he hath receaved his punishment by 
 whipping, and then to be delivered to the keeper to remaine 
 three days, and for such further time until he shall pay the 
 penalties according to the statute. Henrie Mamford en- 
 formeth." f 
 
 William Stone and John Lane the elder, of Castleton 
 near Sherborne, were proved in 1629 to have spoken and 
 
 * Mr. T. Hearn, " Qui Quondam." t Ibid- 
 
A BAILEE PUNISIIEB. THE CLERGY. 145 
 
 uttered contemptuous and scandalous speeches of his Majesty, 
 his laws, and the Courts of Parliament. They were bound 
 over to appear at the next assizes and answer for their 
 conduct." * 
 
 A Bailer punished. 
 
 PoVEKTY In 1631, as in every age, gave confidence to 
 some who had nothing to lose in the indulgence in great 
 license of language. One Robert Hancocke, alias Randell of 
 Maiden Newton, being by reason of his poverty unable to 
 satisfy the law, indulged in railing upon the governors, 
 officers, and others, his neighbours, in such an open, foul, 
 common, and usual manner as was insufferable. Dr. What- 
 combe admonished him in vain. This man was to be com- 
 mitted to the House of Correction at Dorchester for a 
 month, where the keeper was to receive him and set him 
 oh work, and give him such due correction as the quality 
 of his offences shall deserve. Submission to Dr. Whatcombe 
 was to procure his enlargement sooner.f 
 
 The Magistracy coerce and protect the Clergy. 
 
 The functions now exercised by the Ecclesiastical Courts 
 were many of them performed by the county magistracy, 
 and in boroughs by the mayor and his brethren. 
 
 At Blandford Christmas Sessions in 1627, a warrant was 
 issued against Thomas Bartlett, clerk, for sowing sedition 
 between William Hopkins and his wife, and for the like be- 
 tween Bake and his wife. The offending minister 
 
 stood charged with prosecuting a suit against one Lucas, and 
 also for refusing to baptize his child, and further for " chal- 
 lenging the field " of Mr. Martin, Lucas, and Fudge, and for 
 that he standeth indicted this present sessions upon two 
 several bills, viz., one for ale-house haunting, and the other 
 for drunkenness. 
 
 Brawling in church fell within the same jurisdiction. 
 
 * Mr. T. Hearn, " Qui Quondam." f Ibid. 
 
 L 
 
146 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 At Sherborne Sessions in 1631, a minister sought and 
 found relief by informing of divers misdemeanors, disturb- 
 ances, and uncivil behaviour, offered and used towards 
 Samuel Xorrington, clerk, both in time of his prayer before 
 sermon, and also at the time of service in the parish church 
 of Charmouth, by Mary Limbry, the wife of Edward 
 Limbry, of Charmouth, sailor, and Joan her daughter. The 
 Court desired Henry Drake and Roger Gollop, Esq, to 
 call the parties before them, and to examine into the misde- 
 meanors alleged ; and if these were found to be true, then 
 to proceed against the parties according to the form of the 
 Statute.* 
 
 It was the wife and daughter of Stephen Limbry who 
 shut up that mariner in his bed-room, and there kept him, 
 when he ought to have, according to agreement, transported 
 Charles II. to France after the battle of Worcester. 
 
 NeigTibouring Counties are restricted in their Intercourse hy 
 Magistrates, as if they were of separate Realms. 
 Mankind is but too ready to create a secondary kind of 
 caste on every soil ; not exactly to separate into right-hand 
 and left-hand castes in western lands, this institution being 
 Oriental, but to exclude others upon trifling distinctions, and 
 to form cliques and parties. 
 
 This was formerly the case in a remarkable degree in 
 England ; but thanks to increased intercourse, our country- 
 men are becoming more like members of one great family. 
 
 Some twenty years ago, in the middle of a broiling sum- 
 mer's day, some persons were taking refreshment in a front 
 room of the "Hunter's Lodge Inn," situated on the turn- 
 pike road two miles on the eastern side of Axminster, a mile 
 from the boundary line of Dorsetshire. They perceived a 
 man running as if for a wager, much distressed by his speed 
 and the heat of the day. As he came up to them he touched 
 a chord to which their feelings responded. At the words, 
 " Race Gem'men, Devon 'gainst Dorset," a seat was placed, 
 refreshments bountifully afforded; and "Devon," restored, 
 addressed himself to his course like one who was piqued for 
 
 * Mr. T. Hearn, " Qui Quondam.'' 
 
"DORSET" AND "DEVON." — EESTRICTIONS. 147 
 
 the honour of his county. The party soon saw " Dorset" 
 coming up with an attendant, both greatly distressed. Bets 
 were offered for " Devon ; " when the party were soon ad- 
 dressed to their mortification, and inquiries made for the 
 thief they, the constables of the neighbouring town, were 
 pursuing, as he had been seen robbing a gentleman's garden I 
 However, the refreshment afforded the thief enabled him 
 to escape. Like many others, to serve his ends he used 
 party words to excite an interest for an unworthy objectj 
 with what success we have seen. 
 
 Having first asked pardon for this illustrative anecdote 
 and digression, let us observe that bye-laws of borough 
 worthies and of county justices were long framed, as if men 
 outside the bounds of boroughs and counties were foreigners, 
 and too often were treated as hostile, as those whom it was 
 a duty to exclude from what was beneficial, and frequently 
 as though deserving the most annoying restrictions. 
 
 Every page of the history of boroughs displays this. Re- 
 strictions as to the commercial intercourse between " Devon'' 
 and " Dorset," or that of counties, existed, and are not so well 
 known. 
 
 No grain could be transported for sale from the county in 
 which it had been raised without a special license, in which 
 the exact quantity and description of grain to be removed 
 was specified. Dorsetshire butter, which retains its reputa- 
 tion, could not be sent to our countrymen residing in other 
 counties who wanted some of it except in defined quantities, 
 and by parties duly licensed at the Quarter Sessions for that 
 purpose. 
 
 Such a license as the following is most valuable to sceptics 
 who might question the possibility of such a state of things 
 having ever obtained. This entry, made at the Michaelmas 
 Session held at Bridport in 1631, will carry conviction 
 with it : — 
 
 " For as much as a letter hath been directed unto this Court 
 from the maior of the cittie of Exon, therein praying that this 
 Court would license one Humfrey Perry, of that citie, to buy 
 
 L 2 
 
148 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 butter within this county for the provision of the same : this 
 Court doth therefore give way that a license be granted unto the 
 said Humfrey Perry, for the weekly buying in this countie two 
 horse-loade of butter, and to carry the same unto the said citie for 
 the provision of the same." 
 
 It is amusing to read how powerful an effect the eloquent 
 letter of the Mayor of Exeter produced. The authorities 
 " gave way," and the " outside barbarians," as the natives of 
 the Dorset "inside flowery land" might then have styled 
 them, had their two pack-horses with butter in their dorsers. 
 The good people of Exeter can now in four hours get what 
 the metropolis has that is good without troubling the mayor 
 to Intercede for them, or being pestered about a license.* 
 
 Regulation of the Number of Attorney s-at-law. Practice, Sfc. 
 
 Attornets-at-law, now in so many cases the richest in- 
 habitants of country towns, and who have obtained in very 
 many boroughs a position above the numerous householders 
 that form the constituency, were no exception to the general 
 rule. They were regulated by the mayor and his brethren, 
 the merchants or principal traders as to their numbers and 
 manner of practising their profession, not dissimilar to the 
 handicraftsmen, the fullers, the shoemakers, and others of 
 like trades. The latter were subject to the operation of 
 corporation bye-laws that were really a tyranny, and so were 
 the attorneys. 
 
 In 1455, their numbers having increased, and a lachrymose 
 account being given of their practices and the effects pro- 
 duced, most prejudicially, upon the people, a statute provided 
 that there should be six common attorneys in Norfolk, six in 
 Suffolk, and two in Norwich, to be elected and admitted by 
 two of the judges. So in Dorset their numbers were judged 
 to be disproportionate. In the year 1594 Thomas Densloe, 
 Richard Ellyot, and all other attorneys practisino- in the 
 Hustings Court of Lyme, except three, were, for certain 
 good causes, which moved the mayor and his brethren, dis- 
 
 * ;Mr. T. Hearn, from Sessions Book. 
 
REGULATIONS AS TO ATTOENEYS. 149 
 
 missed from their attorneyships. The three attorneys were 
 obliged to take an oath to observe all lawful orders about the 
 practice of the Court of Hastings. They did this before 
 George Wadham, Recorder. 
 
 That this expulsion or exclusion was more than a forensic 
 entry in the court books of Lyme — toere words, and nothing 
 enforced after the hour when the order was passed — is clear 
 from the history of the borough. Mr. Thomas Densloe set up 
 a school ; his scholars were the subjects of a presentment 
 in the year 1597. He submitted to the decree of the borough 
 magnates, and inculcated the rudiments of Latin grammar, 
 expecting perhaps the happy day when he might again plead 
 in bar, or have to make entries salutary and sanitary in 
 Latin, which, if " bad, did not quash indictments'' {Faux 
 Latin ne quashera indiiement). 
 
 The orders passed for the lucky trio who were allowed to 
 continue to practice were stringent. 
 
 No attorney was to advise his client to bring in any de- 
 murrer touching any action for debt or detinue, being but 
 of 20«. or under. If above 20s., the attorney or party shall 
 inform the court of the insufficiency of the declaration or 
 plea, and pray to have the defaults amended before further 
 proceedings. If this be refused, then the party may enter 
 his demurrer. 
 
 And likewise, in actions of trespass, breach of covenant, if 
 but of 20s. or under, the attorney shall not advise a de- 
 murrer. 
 
 Also, not advise the removal of causes begun and depending 
 which may be lawfully tried and determined in the same 
 court. 
 
 Also, not to take more than the ordinary and accustomed 
 fees, except for journeys. 
 
 Also, not to plead any foreign plea in bar in any plaint, 
 action, or suit, but such plea as the attorney shall swear that 
 the matter or averment is true and above 20s. 
 
 The county magistrates undertook the settling matters of 
 etiquette or rule between counsellors and attorneys. 
 
 Attorneys and solicitors were, by an order made in 1626, 
 
 L 3 
 
150 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 not permitted to plead at the Dorset Sessions if there were 
 any counsellors present that could be retained. This was re- 
 presented to be in compliance with the ancient order, and as 
 obtained in other countries ; also for the encouragement of 
 counsellors attending, and honour of the court.* 
 
 These matters would now be left to their own correction. 
 If eight attorneys were to commence practice where three 
 were only needed, five would be found to move elsewhither- 
 The population, too, ought to learn to refrain from litigation, 
 except in cases actually requiring it, as they would from 
 strong drink, too expensive luxuries, or ruinous pleasures. 
 In a word, self-government was a power not confided in. 
 Modern legislation understands this much better. 
 
 The Tnmbrel, Pillory, Cucking- Stool, and other Borough 
 Instruments of Punishment, Sfc. 
 
 " These mounted in a chair curule, 
 Which moderns call a cucking-stool. 
 And o'er the waves in triumph ride 
 Like Dukes of Venice, who are said 
 The Adriatic Sea to wed," &c. 
 
 Hudibras. 
 
 Borough towns were like some little independent states 
 that acknowledge a sovereign ruler, but which, upon the 
 whole, manage their own aifairs, provide for their own 
 internal government by local legislation, and settle a code 
 of laws for the punishment of ofienders in various ways. 
 
 Often do we hear in boroughs of lax discipline, of a daring 
 population that defy authority, and disturb the quiet of 
 " our street," while comparisons are instituted with that 
 good old time when offences could not be perpetrated with 
 impunity, and when troublesome townspeople were made 
 to know themselves by the administration of sound discip- 
 line. Town clerks made their learned entries of these 
 doings, and recorded the use of pilarum sive Collistrigium, 
 cippos, &c. 
 
 * " Qui Quondam," Dorset Session MS. 
 
BOROUGH CODES OF LAW. TRAVELLING. 151 
 
 The jury at borough court leets, till of late, persevered 
 in their presentments for the renewal of the practice of 
 punishing forestallers or regraters ; and they desired a return 
 to the borough punishments, which many believed, together 
 with the other case before mentioned, would restore our 
 little societies to a state bordering upon that of Elysium. 
 
 The borough codes of laws assigned punishments for 
 offences against the well being and order of the little im- 
 perium in imperio. 
 
 Travelling thirty miles to a county town was quite a 
 labour to the honest members of society. Offenders could 
 not be taken to the county gaol, as now-a-day, with facility ; 
 so " grete murtherers, arrant theves, and other grete mys- 
 doers of many shires, as of Sussex, sometymes for ferry 
 distance, and charge, and jiapardie of conveyance ben suffered 
 to escape." 
 
 It was necessary that offenders should be punished for 
 all but great crimes in their borough, or not at all. 
 Laws for the good government of boroughs were in use 
 under* innumerable heads, and the penalty and punishment 
 for neglect of them were appended. 
 
 Much might be written upon the effect produced by 
 borough penal legislation, as compared with that resulting 
 from the system of centralisation. Formerly townsmen 
 witnessed the punishment of offenders with their own eyes. 
 As they viewed the disgrace or discipline, each realised 
 the result of offending conduct, and the observer knew he 
 might make the culprit's lot his own by following a like 
 course. A greater effect was produced upon the spectators 
 than the sentencing to imprisonment with discipline in a 
 gaol at a distance. Herein consists the great difference 
 between ancient and modern punishment. 
 
 The system was marked ; the borough magnates aspired 
 to rule by fear, not because they were cruel or specially 
 delighted in inspiring fear, but from a belief that such was 
 the proper course, that such was necessary, indeed indispen- 
 sable. No class doubted it. The townsmen called for the 
 instruments of punishment, and thought there was no safety, 
 
 I. 4 
 
152 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 no quiet without these. The judges that rode round to the 
 assizes inspired fear. How tame a county assize appears 
 in comparison with those in the reign of Elizabeth. Many 
 assizes now pass without any execution. In Somersetshire 
 alone, in 1596, forty persons were executed, thirty-five 
 burned in the hand, and thirty-seven severely whipped ! 
 
 Thirteen prisoners, men and women, were conveyed to 
 the gallows at "Worcester about 1787 in four carts, not one 
 of whom had committed murder. Eighty-five of the 
 chauffeurs were executed at Chartres in France about the 
 same time, which fact is adduced as a proof what scenes 
 the gallows presented when the legislature determined to 
 check crime by investing punishment with as many appalling 
 features as possible. The result was unsatisfactory. Ofienders 
 were not deterred, but crime increased. 
 
 When borough towns were the seats of local legislation, 
 and the scene of trials and punishment, the instruments used 
 for the several sentences of the dread mayors and the other 
 principal men were necessarily provided. The decay of 
 these implements, or their destruction, have caused entries 
 without which these pages could not have been written. 
 
 The Tumbrel of Lyme Regis was out of repair in 
 
 A Tumbrel at Wootton.Bassett in 1760, date 1668. (From the Wiltshire Archaeol. Mag.) 
 
 1581. This was that low-rolling cart or carriage (in law 
 Latin, tumberelld) used as a punishment of disgrace and 
 infamy. Millers, when they stole corn, were chastised by 
 the tumbrel. Persons were sometimes fastened with an 
 
TUMBREL AT WOOTTON-BASSETT. 153 
 
 iron chain to a tumbrel, and conveyed bareheaded with 
 din and cry through the principal streets of towns. 
 
 '' Court of Hustings Booh, 1581. (Lyme.') 
 
 "The jury present that the tumbrell be repaired and main- 
 tained from time to time according to the statute." 
 
 In 1583, Mr. Mayor was to provide a tumbrel before 
 All Saints Day, under a penalty of 10s. 
 
 If the foregoing instrument of punishment was needed 
 for one class of offenders, we shall find that evils existed 
 that immediately called for other machines deemed neces- 
 sary to abate such, whatever they might prove to be. A 
 learned town-clerk of Lyme, in 1592, thus enters, as was 
 customary, in Latin in the Hustings' Book, what had 
 been given him in plain English : — 
 
 " Item prsBsentant uxorem Thomae Lacy unam Scold." 
 
 Translated thus : " They likewise present the wife of 
 Thomas Lacy to be a scold." 
 
 By another entry further information is to be gleaned : — 
 
 " Item, we find that "William "Welsh, his wife, and his 
 daughter Elizabeth Purden, are common scolders, one with 
 the other, to the disturbance of their neighbours." 
 
 A "wrangler from house to house," in 1596, found a 
 place in a presentment in the court of Hustings' Book. 
 "Whether such publicity produced any amendment in the 
 party is doubtful. To be written down in a great book 
 by a scrivener in one's true character must have been 
 viewed as a stigma. A goodwife Pupe for " mis-using 
 her tunge to the hurt of here naybors " was presented. 
 
 The peace had to be maintained ; therefore irritating ex- 
 pressions which led to angry answers and jangling discussions 
 were matter for a jury, who acted upon the legal saying, 
 " that the greater the truth the greater the libel." The jury 
 of Seaford found Thomas "Woman's wife saucy. This good 
 wife perhaps experienced the " stool, the dread of every 
 scolding quean," for a criticism upon the commodities another 
 woman sold. She said, " her beans and pease were spillde " 
 
154 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 (spoiled). How just a remark if these articles were not good 
 for food, and how easily refutable the assertion if they 
 really were so. 
 
 A proclamation had been issued in 1547 by Henry VIII., 
 " that all women should not meet together to babble and 
 talk, and that aU men should keep their wives in their 
 houses." The conduits and dipping places in running 
 streams were the places of constant resort of the gossips. 
 
 After a presentment at the manorial Court of Seaborough, 
 near Crewkerne, in 1486, two women were fined a penny 
 each as common scolds. At the same time an order was 
 made that the tenants of the manor should not scold their 
 wives under pain of forfeiting their tenements and cottages. 
 Not fifty years afterwards an order was made that tenants' 
 luives should not scold under pain of 6s., one-half to go 
 to the repairs of the chapel, and the other half to the lord of 
 the manor.* 
 
 In the parish book of Axminster is an item (1675) : "For 
 a warrant to ly against the scoulds. Is." The evil must 
 have become no longer endurable.f 
 
 The long church porch of Lyme contained one part of the 
 dreaded Cucking-Stool, ready for the correction of certain 
 
 A Cucking-Stool or Treduchet, near Worthing, about 1776. 
 
 "No brawling wives — no furious wenches — 
 No fire so hot but water quenches." 
 
 AVest. 
 
 Tulman's Book of the Axe. 
 
 t Ibid. 
 
CUCKING-STOOL. — PUNISHMENT OF SCOLDS. 155 
 
 offenders. Sundry entries are here given to prove that this 
 branch of borough discipline was not neglected. 
 
 Cucking is a corruption of coquine, so that cucking-stool 
 is that for troublesome, noisy women. 
 
 In 1608, a woman was ordered to leave the town of 
 Southampton, who had been guilty of slander, and when a 
 few days later it was discovered that she had not gone away 
 and had repeated the offence, she was condemned to be set 
 in a cage with a paper before her.* 
 
 Scolds used to be punished at Leicester by the mayor on 
 a cuckstool before their doors, and then carried to the four 
 gates of the town.f 
 
 Town Accompt Book of Lyme. 
 
 1631. For bringing the cucking-stool out of the church - 
 
 1633. For amending the cucking-stool - - - 
 
 1653. Paid for a piece of timber for a cucking-stool and 
 
 six boards ..... 
 
 1657. For timber to make a cucking-stool 
 
 1658. For making a cucking-stool, George Baker 
 
 See Court of Hustings' Book. 
 1685. 30th April. Item, we present the corporation for 
 
 not repairing the cucking-stool - - - 6 8 
 
 Therefore it is ordered that it be repaired within 
 
 one month subpoena. 
 [There was soon employment for greater seve- 
 rities this year.] 
 
 Bound Book of Presentments. 
 1724. The corporation was presented for not keeping up 
 a ducking-stool as it was formerly allowed by 
 the informations of several persons. [Every- 
 thing was now in decay in the town.] 
 
 Kingston-upon- Thames. 
 1572. The making of the cucking-stool 
 Iron work for the same 
 Timber for the same ... 
 Three brasses for the same, and three wheels 
 
 £13 4 
 * Archseological Institute. f Nichol's Hist, of Leicester. 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 16 
 
 2 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 8 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 6 
 
 4 
 
 10 
 
156 SOCIAL HISTOKY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 At Marlborough *, in 1625, a man had for his help at the cucking 
 of Joan Nealj id. 
 
 Gravesend. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 1636. The porters for ducking of Good wife Campion - 2 
 
 Two porters for laying up the ducking-stool - 8 
 
 The cucking-stool was used by the pond in many village 
 greens as commonly, about one hundred years ago or little 
 more, as stocks now are. By the sea the quay offered a 
 convenient spot. The barbican at Plymouth was the locality, 
 doubtless terrible to offenders, however careless of com- 
 mitting their wordy scolding nuisance. Two pounds were 
 paid for a cucking-stool at Leicester in 1768. Since that it 
 has been placed at the door of a notorious scold as a warning. 
 Upon admission to the House of Correction at Liverpool, 
 a woman had to undergo the severity of the ducking-stool 
 till a little before the year 1803, when Mr. James Neild 
 wrote to Dr. Lettsom. The pump in the men's court was 
 the whipping-post for females, which discipline continued, 
 though not weekly. 
 
 See the law case of Hannah Saxby in an interesting 
 article, " Wiltshire Archseol. Mag." Vol. I. 
 
 In 1629 Beaminster was without the necessary and custo- 
 mary implements of borough discipline stocks, ducking-stool, 
 and piUory. Peter Hoskins, farmer of the manor, was 
 ordered to procure all these in three months, under pain of 
 five pounds. 
 
 Edith Coplyn, of Stoke Abbot, had a feud with another 
 labourer's wife. If she misdemeaned herself, she was to be 
 taken before a magistrate, who was by the Court desired to 
 give her the punishment of the ducking-stool or some other 
 like punishment. 
 
 One husband at Jiristol brought an action against Edmund 
 Mountjoy, whose year of civic supremacy was then out for 
 having had his wife ducked for a scold. Evans, in his His- 
 
 * Wajlen's History. 
 
CUCKING-STOOL. — PUNISHMENT OF SCOLDS. 157 
 
 tory, mentions the circumstance. Ducange may be consulted 
 for this practice under the word super undatio. 
 
 Cucking- Stool, 
 
 Lord Holt, the judge, said of a woman whose case was 
 before him, that cucking her would rather harden than cure 
 her, and that if she were once ducked she would scold on all 
 the days of her life. 
 
 At Preston, in the " Book of Customs of the Manor," frau- 
 dulent tradespeople and insolvent burgesses occasionally un- 
 derwent the cooling operation. 
 
 Our American brethren have found that in running be- 
 beyond the sea, the Scold family have accompanied them. 
 The grand juries of Philadelphia from 1717 to 1720, in good 
 set terms, deplored the absence of a ducking-stool for 
 scolding women, and the necessity that existed iov that public 
 convenience. So late as the year 1824, a woman was con^ 
 victed of being a common scold, in the Court of Quarter 
 Sessions of Philadelphia county, and sentenced to be placed 
 in a cucking or ducking-stool, and plunged three times into 
 the water ; but the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, upon 
 the removal of the case by writ of error, decided that this 
 punishment was obsolete, and contrary to the spirit of the 
 age.* 
 
 Baretti, the Italian lexicographer, journeyed from 
 London to Exeter in a six-inside coach, in four days, in 
 1760. He records the seeing the ducking-stool over the 
 water by Honiton, where they dipped those old women 
 suspected of being witches. There, if they sunk, their fate 
 was decided ; if they swam, they were supposed to have been 
 clearly proved to be witches. 
 
 Some half century after this, the writer of these pages 
 being at the same town, a man led forth his wife with a 
 halter round her neck, and sold her for eighteenpence. The 
 purchaser led off his bargain, and it was said by the by- 
 standers that he was the man most likely, or whom they 
 
 * Notes and Queries, 1854, March II. 
 
158 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 expected, would buy the woman. Bakers who gave out 
 bread short of weight were subjected to the ducking-stool so 
 late as the great Howard's time, about the year 1775. 
 
 Such was the punishment of weavers in the reign of 
 Charles I., who did not return cloth of honest weight, 
 according to what had been given out. 
 
 This ancient implement of punishment was used for those 
 who dressed meat a second time. 
 
 Hashed meat {carries recalefactce) was cooked as a snare 
 for tender consciences of fasting monks, who persuaded 
 themselves that in that form it ceased to be meat. This 
 relaxation of discipline was condemned by the constitution 
 of Gregory IX., given to the monks of St. Benoit. In a 
 journey of Edward I., a.d. 1299, Damele, the cook, for 
 rewarming his meat, was fined 3s. 4rf.* 
 
 The Brank, for taming shrews, was preferred to the 
 cucking-stool in some counties, and was used there for 
 
 A Brank, or Scold's Bridle. From that In the Guildhall, Worcester. 
 (From Stanley's Guide to that City.) 
 
 the same purpose. The brank was in favour in the nor- 
 thern counties, and in Worcestershire, though there were 
 
 * E.oyal Journeys in Sussex, by W. H. Blauw, Esq. 
 
THE BEANK. — CAGE, OK PILLORY. 159 
 
 notwithstanding some of the other instruments of punish- 
 ment used, called in that county gum-stools. 
 
 The brank was put over the head, and was fastened with 
 a padlock. There are entries at Worcester about mending 
 the " scould's bridle and cords for the same." 
 
 The cucking-stool not only endangered the health of the 
 party, but also gave the tongue liberty 'twixt every dip. 
 The brank was put over the head, and was fastened with a 
 padlock.* 
 
 There is a representation of Robert Sharp, an officer of 
 the corporation of Newcastle, leading Ann Bidlestone 
 through the streets, with the branks or gossip's bridle on, 
 in "the Local Historian's Table Book of Northumber- 
 land," &c. t In the church of Walton-on-Thames, in 
 Warrington Museum, and in the Guildhall, Worcester, are 
 branks. J 
 
 The Cage, or Pilloet, having been neglected, the 
 jury made this presentment in 1584 : " That Mr. Mayor 
 do cause the cage, or pillory, to be set up in good order 
 before the feast of St. John Baptist, upon pain of 10s." 
 
 The pillory was coloured in 1650, at a cost of 4s. 
 
 The mayor and corporation having been presented again, 
 in 1694, for not repairing the pillory, Mr. Samuel Cour- 
 tenay, mayor, paid for boards about the shambles and pil- 
 lory, in 1699, 11. 15s. 8d. 
 
 In 1724 the constables were presented for not dis- 
 charging their duty respecting the pillory and stocks; 
 which presentment doubtless referred to the subjecting 
 offenders to due discipline by means of these machines. 
 
 The Stocks. William Tudbold, mayor, paid to John 
 Cogan for making of the (strap ?) of iron, and for two 
 staples and nails for the stocks, in 1551, 17s. 6d. 
 
 There are other entries for repairs at Lyme. 
 
 Wood stealers, or, as they were styled, hedge-tearers, 
 were, about 1584, set in the stocks two days in the open 
 
 * Stanley's Worcester Guide. 
 
 t Vol. i. p. 283. See Brand's Hist, of Newcastle, vol. ii. p. 292. 
 
 I See the Transactions of the Historic Society. 
 
160 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 street, with the wood stolen before them, as a punishment 
 for a second offence. 
 
 Let no one view the pillory as an instrument for the 
 punishment of offenders under the direction of the magis- 
 trate, whose judgment results from a deliberate estimate 
 of the nature of the offence. 
 
 A longer or shorter continuance in a constrained exposed 
 position was assigned to each. Such would be a very in- 
 correct view. 
 
 The magistrate sentenced to the pUlory, and some official 
 assisted; but the populace administered, and regulated the 
 punishment. 
 
 Some sentenced to stand found the punishment easy, or 
 a very triumph of popularity, while others were frightfully 
 lacerated, and almost killed with brick-bats and all kinds 
 of missiles. The magistrates and the populace often took 
 opposite views of the guilt of the party pilloried. The 
 populace were practically either joint administrators of the 
 law with the magistrates, carrying the punishment further 
 than was ever contemplated, or else parties to nullify com- 
 pletely the sentence. 
 
 Titus Oates is made to express fears for his person in 
 a ballad : — 
 
 " See the rabble all round me in battle array. 
 Against my wood castle their batteries play ; 
 With turnip granadoes the storm is begun." 
 
 A knife, like a pruning-knife, was sometimes in request 
 to cut off the culprit's ears ; scissors to slit his nostrils, and 
 a hot iron to sear the wounds. 
 
 How numerous are the laudatores temporis acti those 
 who commend the preceding age. How few, probably, 
 who are so have carefully scanned the whole bearing of any 
 subject, the good and prejudicial — that which still re- 
 mains available, and that which is obsolete. This brief 
 remark was occasioned by a presentment of the constables 
 of Lyme so late as 1752. Doubtless sincere in their 
 estimate of what in their judgment would prove a panncea 
 
WHIPPING AND ITS PKICE. 161 
 
 for the lax discipline they had to witness and deplore, still 
 we must judge them to have been men behind their age. 
 
 " 1752. A pare of stocks wanting in tlie borough. 
 A pilary wanting. 
 
 Stocks, pillory, and cucking-stoOl all wanting and neces- 
 sary, and ought to be erected next court leet. 
 
 Giles Davie, Edward Godfrey, J. Kerby." 
 
 Lest any reader of this history might suppose that these 
 formidable machines were set up as objects to deter our 
 townsmen and women from committing the offences to 
 which each was appropriated, and not so much for actual 
 use, some specific information is submitted. 
 
 There is an entry in the archives of Weymouth respect- 
 ing the pillory, which does not appear to be readily under- 
 stood. Some little history connected with election matters 
 requires to be explained. 
 
 An inhabitant of Weymouth (a.d. 1727) having ad- 
 dressed Mr. Isaac Harvey respecting election matters, and 
 having read a printed letter or handbill, the same per- 
 son added, that if the corporation durst repair tlie pillory 
 he would get upon it and read that letter, and would preach 
 half an hour to the people, and then come down and burn 
 the pillory. 
 
 Whipping. 
 
 " Gloucester. My masters of St. Albans have you not beadles in your 
 town, and things called whips ? 
 
 " Mayor. Yes, my lord, if it please your grace." 
 
 Shakspeake. 
 
 Not only was a tumbrel needed, to which the offender 
 was secured, but a particular coat had to be provided for 
 the operation. 
 
 Mr. Ellesdon, Mayor of Lyme, in 1595, paid for — 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Four yards of canvas to make a coat to whip the rogues in 3 
 
 Making the same - - - - 6 
 
 M 
 
162 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 S. d. 
 
 Whipping of three of the ship boys for stealing of Mr. 
 
 Hassard's salmon fish in the Cobb 1 
 
 (N. B. — Salmon was plentiful in the west at this epoch.) 
 
 The charge of fourpence made for whipping a boy con- 
 tinued for many years the same. The whipping of a woman 
 who was a stranger was little more costly ; but the inflict- 
 ing such a punishment upon a townswoman was remunerated 
 at a higher rate, as may well be supposed, from a consi- 
 deration of several circumstances. To take a violent, noisy 
 woman from her chamber, tie madam to the tumbrel and 
 whip her round the town, was an undertaking that de- 
 manded assistance and protection to the official or hu'eling 
 that wielded the thong. In the Town Accompt Book are 
 found such entries as those which are given in illustra- 
 tion : — 
 
 s. d. 
 1625. For whipping William Wynter's boy - 4 
 
 „ Agnes Abbott twice - 2 4 
 
 1644. Paid two soldiers to attend the whipping of a 
 
 woman ... 26 
 
 Paid to whipping four women - - 4 
 
 To visit a gaol the morning the women were whipped 
 was the practice of some men about town. They discussed 
 the courage of the poor wretches, and it was deemed highly 
 entertaining. 
 
 It sometimes happened, just as might have been expected 
 in a small town, no townsman could be found willing for 
 some fourteenpence to incur the violence and resentment of 
 the person whipped and his friends by undertaking the 
 office. Other parishes had to be visited in order to find some 
 bold executor of the law. 
 
 The constable's charge in \&^1 : — 
 
 s. d. 
 Paid Edward Norwood going to Wooton and Uplyme to 
 
 get a man to whip Emanuel Lincoln . - - 6 
 
 Paid Edward Norwood going to Charmouth to conduct 
 
 E. Lincoln thither - - - - 3 
 
 Paid a man to whip the said E. Lincoln - . - 1 
 
JUDGE Jeffrey's delights. 163 
 
 Are we not to uoderstand that though a man of another 
 parish was found willing to whip the offender, yet that he 
 did not come into the borough to carry out the sentence, but 
 would do so if the delinquent was sent to him, which was 
 done ? Let us take another whipping-bill, and see if this is 
 not a correct view of the case. 
 
 1657. Paid Robert Milley's wife for going to Wooton 
 
 [three miles] to get a man to whip two prisoners - 4 
 
 Paid a man for whipping them - - - 2 
 
 Conducting them to that tithing - - - 1 
 
 At Lewes a goodwife earned her shilling for whipping 
 offenders so late as 1718. 
 
 The Lyme constable's accounts for many years about the 
 year 1662 were principally made up of charges for whipping 
 and rending on men and women. For execution of this 
 sentence upon strangers the difficulty in finding an official 
 was not great. See a bill for 1662. 
 
 s. d. 
 Paid towards the whipping of the cutpurse woman - 6 
 
 Paid the Barbadoes boy for whipping a strange woman - 6 
 
 The female culprits had not only to suffer from the sen- 
 tence, but from the most odious vice which is incident to 
 human nature, a delight in misery merely as misery. This 
 led such as Judge Jeffreys to scare them into fits by dilating 
 on all the details of what they were to suffer. 
 
 Thus, when ordering an unlucky adventuress to be whipped 
 at the cart's tail, " Hangman," he would exclaim, writes a 
 great living authority *, " I charge you to pay particular at- 
 tention to this lady. Scourge her soundly, man ! Scourge 
 her till the blood runs down ! It is Christmas, a cold time 
 for madam to strip in ! See that you warm her shoulders 
 thoroughly ! " 
 
 In the Court of Hustings Book, 1578, it was ordered that 
 the constables do suffer no vagabonds which wander about 
 
 * Macaulay. 
 M 2 
 
164 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 without lawful authority to go unpunished upon pain of 
 6s. 8d. 
 
 The preparing false briefs was a common occupation. 
 
 In 1661 there were incurred for expenses in prosecuting 
 those who had false briefs and sending them to gaol, 
 4?. 155. lid. 
 
 How summarily such persons were occasionally treated 
 appears in the Hustings Book, May 14. 1679, and 1688. 
 
 John Handson, of the parish of Newington in Southwark, 
 in the county of Surrey, and Margaret his wife, were both 
 there openly whipped for wandering rogues, and were assigned 
 to pass from parish to parish the next straightway to Newing- 
 ton aforesaid, where the said John Handson confessed he last 
 dwelt, to be there in sixteen days. 
 
 1688. Andrew Campbell and "\Yalter Scott, two pretended 
 Scotchmen, with a counterfeit and false pass, whipped for 
 sturdy vagrant rogues, and sent on to the next tithing. 
 
 Dinah Page for having obtained goods under false pre- 
 tences was sentenced at Marlborough to one month's im- 
 prisonment, and to be publicly whipped on a market-day in 
 1807.* 
 
 There was a Dark House in the borough of Lyme which 
 may be styled a dungeon. Hedge-tearers were numerous 
 before the introduction of coals, and wrought much mischief. 
 Persons found with wood had two days and a night in the 
 Dark House, and during that time to have brown bread, 
 which would perhaps be worthy the name of black bread, and 
 water. 
 
 The Stocks were not the Instrument of punishment and 
 disgrace only for those who offended in the vicinity of the 
 church, their use was more extended ; inhabitants whose 
 conduct was presented by the constables as highly immoral 
 were sentenced to the disgrace of the stocks and to the smart 
 of a whipping besides, f 
 
 * Waylen's Hist, of Marlborough. 
 
 t In the archives of ^Feymouth there is a. presentment by the con- 
 stables, that on 16th September, 1621, John Bascombe and Amy Pushman, 
 the wife of ^Villiam Pushman, -were taken fast-locked in a chamber in the 
 
CARDINAL WOLSEY. " DEUNKAED 8 CLOAK." 165 
 
 The stocks are remarkable for the punishment inflicted 
 upon Cardinal Wolaey, when incumbent of Lymington near 
 Yeovil, by the direction of Sir Amias Poulett. This strict 
 moralist seeing that the minister of the parish was then in 
 liquor, it being fair time, had him set in the stocks.* 
 
 Should any suppose that this mode of punishment was 
 only for the low in station, and that it was only the humble 
 who were subjected to this and similar modes of discipline, 
 the above and following statements will undeceive him. 
 
 The scholars and residents in the colleges of Cambridge 
 were by a decree of the vice-chancellor and heads oi 
 houses forbidden to bathe in 1571 in any river, pool, or 
 pond, by day or night. Offenders, undergraduates, were to 
 be punished with eods; graduates were to be set in the 
 STOCKS the whole day in the common hall of their college 
 and pay a fine of 10s. 
 
 The following instrument might be in request now-a-day. 
 The " drunkard's cloak " was a cask with a hole at the top, 
 through which the drunkard's head protruded, and one on 
 each side for either hand. The legs were free for the 
 offender to perambulate with the instrument of punishment 
 about him.f 
 
 Were not valuable possessions taxed ? and was not the 
 rightful possession of stocks and whipping-posts deemed to 
 be such by lords of manors? Undoubtedly. They were 
 held to be proofs and signs of manorial property, and tests 
 of its genuine character. Hence taxes were paid upon the 
 manorial implements of punishment, the stocks, whipping- 
 post, &c., by the too often proud possessor, the lord of the 
 manor. 
 
 The precise object of these immediate pages was an 
 
 night, either doing naughty, or altogether suspicious of doing naughty ; 
 and, therefore, by order of the court, punished hj whipping and setting 
 in the stocks. The male offender was living in Weymouth some years 
 after. 
 
 * See Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors for the affair, and for 
 Wolsey's revenge. 
 
 t J. Brand's Hist, of Newcastle, vol. ii. p. 192. 
 
 M 3 
 
166 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 enumeration of the instruments used for the due carrying 
 out of borough punishment — the weapons of a borough 
 police. Borough legislature is much too large a topic to be 
 wholly embraced under this head. It has its due proportion 
 of space assigned to it, when the orders, precepts, rules and 
 laws for brewers, tipplers, bakers, foreigners, &c., are under 
 consideration. The use of the stocks as a punishment of 
 offenders against conventional morality during the Pro- 
 tectorate brings the following particulars within our scope : — 
 
 " The affectation of extreme attention to outward ob- 
 servances of decorum, and the assumption of a saintly de- 
 meanour, were not confined to the excessive enforcement of 
 a regard for the Sabbath, but were displayed also in a minute 
 attention to verbal conversation and the phraseology of the 
 period ; and the laws for the due observance of a decent and 
 moral demeanour in this respect were frequently applied to 
 an extreme that would be ridiculous in this day of certainly 
 advanced refinement. 
 
 " Few sittings of the justices of Dorchester took place 
 during the term comprised between 1654 and the Restoration, 
 at which they had not to adjudicate upon some charge of 
 swearing, of which the most frequent and obnoxious in- 
 stances are, ' By the name of God ; ' the fines imposed vary- 
 ing in amount, but being chiefly 5s. In one instance ' a 
 gentleman not named ' for swearing such an oath was con- 
 victed in the fine of ' a noble ; ' and ' Mr. Robert Lawrence, 
 Esqr.' is fined \0s. for a similar oath. We see here, that if 
 the law was no respecter of persons, those who administered 
 it paid some attention to titular distinction. 
 
 " It is to be regretted that even the fair sex were some- 
 times amenable to punishment for this offence ; to wit, on the 
 13th March, 1656, ' Charitie Rabats was set in y" stocks for 
 hir cursinge.' 
 
 " There are several instances in which such expressions as 
 ' Plague take you ' were visited with the penalty for cursing. 
 On one occasion an information was laid against a lad who, 
 whilst playing at fives with a companion, ' cursed and said 
 " Plague take him," meaning y^ baule.' It is well that Gray 
 
SCANDAL. LOVE OFFENCES. 167 
 
 wrote some years later, or he surely would have been visited 
 for his magnificent ode, commencing — 
 
 " ' Euin seize thee ! ruthless king ! ' " 
 
 " But the judicial functionaries of the day took cognisance 
 not only of cursing, but of other foul and intemperate lan- 
 guage. Such expressions as ' rogue,' ' base rogue,' ' thief,' 
 ' foul toad,' and other verbal unpleasantries, were regarded 
 as offences of sufficient magnitude to be brought before the 
 notice of the bench. These things frequently arose out of 
 the political hostilities of the time, as we meet with such 
 epithets as ' crop-eared rogue ' and ' cavalier knave.' One 
 Matthew Pouncy, for abusing the mayor, the recorder, and 
 all the rest of the bench, as ' knaves and roags,' was bound 
 to appear at the Quarter Session to answer the charge. 
 
 " The interference of the justices in these minor matters of 
 social decorum and the properties of demeanour, was also 
 manifested in their constituting themselves as arbitrators in 
 cases of private scandal. On the 26th of February, 1657, 
 Charles Gardiner was informed against for using, regarding 
 two of his neighbours, ' words tending much scandoll to 
 them boath.' And, even beyond this, it appears, by the fol- 
 lowing extraordinary entry, that the court of justice was 
 occasionally converted into a very court of love, Venus and 
 Cupid being displaced to make room for Mr. Mayor and 
 Mr. Bayliffe Stansbie. 
 
 " ' The 12th of Septem., 1656. — This daye Alice Hill 
 vppon examination is found to keepe company with Phillip 
 Bartlett in vnseasonable time, and saith shee will not for- 
 sak him vnlesse hee will forsak her. Shee is ordered not to 
 keepe him company againe without leav.' All honour to 
 Alice Hill ! ' Faithful found among the faithless,' she was a 
 pattern for her sex. Faithful as fair, what cared she for Mr. 
 Mayor or Mr. Bayliffe ? Strong in the deep affection for 
 lier dear Philip, firm in the loyalty of her love, she defied the 
 might of judicial authority in the very spirit of the old 
 couplet : — 
 
 M 4 
 
168 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 " ' If you love me as I love you, 
 
 No ' bench ' shall cut our loves in two.' " 
 
 This appeared in the " Dorset County Chronicle," under 
 the title of" Dorchester in the Seventeenth Century," Nov. 4. 
 1844. Mr. Hearn was the author ; since become an emigrant 
 to Australia. 
 
 Upon information being furnished of immorality being 
 practised the magistrates were not slow to act. 
 
 At the Dorset sessions in 1626 the court was informed 
 that one Eleanor Llartin, the wife of Thomas Martin, of 
 Burton, is a woman of ill name and fame, and suspected to 
 live very incontinently with one John Patie, of the same 
 place, tailor. 
 
 Eleanor IMartin vras forthwith committed to the House of 
 Correction, there to remain at the pleasui-e of the court, and 
 a warrant was issued against John Patie for his personal 
 appearance at the next sessions. It was further ordered, 
 that if the said Eleanor Martin shall again frequent the 
 company of the said John Patie, the said order was to be a 
 sufficient warrant for the constables of the hundred of Sher- 
 borne forthwith, upon such her suspected society with the 
 said John Patie, to apprehend and convey her to the House 
 of Correction. This case gave their worships trouble at 
 several sessions ; for, notwithstanding the prohibitions, the 
 parties continued their familiarity in a suspicious manner. 
 
 The court ordered that if at any time Patie should be seen 
 or known to be in the company of, or to frequent the house 
 of Eleanor Martin, he was, upon complaint before a justice, 
 to be sent to the House of Correction, and likewise Eleanor 
 Martin. The proper guardian of his wife's honour it seems 
 was not vigilant, so it was ordered that if Thomas Martin, 
 the husband, did at any time give any, or connive at such 
 meeting, he was to be sent to the House of Correction, 
 there to remain till further order therein. 
 
 This threat of visiting any one — in this case a husband — 
 for neglecting the performance of a social duty, exhibits 
 great interference with the private concerns of families, but 
 
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 169 
 
 at the same time much superintending concern for the good 
 government of the members of the community. This branch 
 of the exercise of authority has ceased: magistrates only 
 administer the written law. These worthy men bore a re- 
 semblance to the E-oman censors ; and what would now be 
 deemed to be tyranny was in Charles's reign judged to be 
 a vindication of offended morals and religion. 
 
 William Steevens, of Swanage, for having frequented the 
 company of Christian, the wife of Edward Coles, " in a very 
 suspicious manner," had lain in gaol for the space of three 
 quarters of a year, or thereabouts. His liberation had been 
 effected after promise and hope of reformation ; but he re- 
 lapsed into his former habits of suspicious visits to Goodwife 
 Coles, and was again consigned to gaol. 
 
 We hear nothing of the informers. Were they jealous or 
 hostile towards the accused ? What a field for private 
 malice did this system lay open ? * 
 
 The crime of sheep-stealing was visited by the magistrates 
 at the sessions for Dorset with the punishment of branding 
 the offender on the left hand with the letter F (felon) and 
 liberating; him. 
 
 The extreme punishment, death, was inflicted at sessions. 
 Thus, at the January sessions held at Blandford in 1631, 
 Maria Eyves, alias Collins, and Walter Sampson, were sen- 
 tenced to be hanged. At the January sessions in 1635, held 
 at the same town, Robert Keat, and at the Easter sessions of 
 the same year, held at Sherborne, Nicholas Grant, were left 
 for execution. The offences are not specified. 
 
 At the Michaelmas sessions held at Bridport the follow- 
 ing entry occurs : — 
 
 " Elizabetha Johnson, alias Stevens, pro vagrant tanq. vaga- 
 bund. incorrigibil. suspend, per collu. usque dm. mortua sit." 
 
 If either the incorrigible vagrant or the sheep-stealer were 
 to be hanged, the latter now-a-day would suffer. In 1 635, 
 however, one got off with branding, the other was doomed 
 to the gallows, t 
 
 * Mr. T. Heain, " Qui Quondam." f Ibid. 
 
170 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Some boroughs possessed privileges which they set great 
 Talue upon. Judge Jeffreys in his terrible charge at Bristol 
 refers to the dignity of that great emporium, saying, " This 
 city it seems claims the right of hanging and drawing." The 
 right-hand quarter of a rebel was sent to the city or borough 
 in highest honour. Should we not now hesitate to advance 
 claims which would procure such distinction ? 
 
 The dreadful scenes which followed the last business of a 
 county assize did not prevent a festive beginning of the same. 
 On the commission day at each county town was held an 
 assize ball. The judges attended in black silk gowns with 
 band and two-curl bob- wig. They did not dance, but usually 
 played at whist.* 
 
 A County Gaol in the Reign of Charles the First. 
 
 Prison discipline has become one of the standard topics 
 of the day. The great turn their thoughts to the lowest 
 members in the social scale, and proper necessaries are pro- 
 vided for those whose incarceration is the result of crime. 
 Though immured, the guilty are not considered to have 
 forfeited all claims to compassion or regard. All hope for 
 the futiu-e is not lost on entering the prison house, for 
 much is done to amend the criminals. Their punishment is 
 proportioned to their crime. The only question lies between 
 them and the oifended law ; nothing besides intervenes. 
 The officials carry out, not as principals, but subordinates, 
 the sentence. This makes imprisonment a very simple 
 matter compared with what it long continued to be, till 
 indeed that sainted visitor, the revered Howard, rapped at 
 the prison doors, and mankind shuddered at his accounts of 
 what passed within the walls. 
 
 In any mention of the county gaol of Dorsetshire in 
 Charles the First's reign it should be clearly understood 
 that a great change had taken place. Between the years 
 1630 and 1637 such abuses had crept in, that the 
 
 * Notes aud Queries, No 319. 
 
GAOL GOVERNMENT. 171 
 
 governor or keeper Thomas Devenish was dismissed, 
 or, it may more properly be said, was discontinued, or 
 not allowed to agree any longer with the under-sheriff to 
 hold the former post. 
 
 Of the gaol at Dorchester, before the correction of the 
 abuses referred to, we know nothing. We may fairly infer 
 that it may be received as a type of such houses. Com- 
 pared with what gaols are in the nineteenth century, every 
 one of such places was a Pandemonium. Want of proper 
 and necessary diet, neglect of a proper supply of water, 
 bad ventilation and drainage, occasioned the dreadful gaol 
 fever and a tainted atmosphere, in whidh the smallpox 
 revelled. These destroyed throughout the realm, so late as 
 1773, more than aU the public executions; and these were 
 fed by 160 different offences. 
 
 The judges of assize caused to be issued under their own 
 direction certain orders, which are here given as an example 
 of embodied gaol reform of the reign of Charles I. The 
 claims of society, the due regulation of the house and its 
 inmates, were at that era deemed to have been amply 
 provided for. Perhaps the reform was viewed as a final 
 one ; probably may have been judged to be too sweeping. 
 It has proved, however, a small anticipation of that which 
 a truly great character effected 140 years after throughout 
 the land. 
 
 Orders for the better Government of the Gaol and Mainprize 
 
 of Dorchester, 
 " 1. By this rule the building formerly used as a House 
 of Correction within the precincts of the gaol is directed to 
 be set apart for the employment of poor prisoners, as well 
 debtors as felons, that shall be willing and able to get their 
 livings by labours ; and that the gaoler shall at his own 
 charge provide such tools and materials as every able man 
 desiring work and duly performing his labour shall and 
 may have fourpence at the least for every day's work; 
 and every woman and other person above the age of foui-- 
 
172 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 teen and under the age of eighteen years may and shall 
 have threepence at the least for every day's work. And 
 if they deserve more, to have so much more for their labour 
 respectively, as they shall deserve," &c. &c. 
 
 Workhouses and houses of correction are mentioned 
 with little distinction. Such were permitted to be erected 
 at Blandford, Shaftesbury, Cranbourne, and other places 
 in the county. The Marquis of Winchester, the Lord 
 Lieutenant of Dorset, directed mayors, &c., to levy their 
 proportion due toward the expense of a House of Correc- 
 tion for Dorset, a.d. 1583. The gaol inmates, the starving 
 debtor, and eqfially starving felon associated in their 
 Gehenna were set to work ; so that the place became a 
 great workshop for the benefit of the governor, who reaped 
 the profits. The masters or governors had power to put 
 fetters or gyves upon those set to work and labour, and to 
 whip them moderately.* 
 
 It has been frequently affirmed that the pauper is too 
 often cared for and provided for less than the prisoner. 
 At this date a pauper past labour had 4c?. a week assigned 
 for a week's maintenance, which, upon complaint, was 
 raised to 6c?. per week. This is the sum directed to be paid 
 for a day's labour of a prisoner ; but the latter was perhaps 
 understood to be an artisan or skilled labourer. 
 
 In the celebrated act 43 Elizabeth, 1601, the foundation 
 of our present system of poor laws, a test was insti- 
 tuted, and by which it was ordered that such persons (i. e. 
 able-bodied applicants) were to receive relief only on con- 
 dition that they should work for it. The act of 1607 
 authorised the building " houses of correction," in which 
 implements and machinery were provided for all such as 
 were able to work. 
 
 These " houses of correction " were, as their name 
 implies, so much of the nature of penal establishments that 
 an act was passed in 1723 for the correction of workhouses. 
 
 The gaol of Dorchester appears to have been applied to 
 
 * llcarn's Dorset Sessions. 
 
STATE OF GAOLS. 173 
 
 the reception of, 1. felons, 2. debtors, and 3. paupers, a 
 mixture of the prison and union, or poorhouse. 
 
 " 2. Also, that every sheriff from henceforth shall and 
 may freely choose whom he please to be his gaoler (which 
 is desired to be a free choice, without taking any recom- 
 pense for that office)." Then follows a provision for allowing 
 the sheriff the free use of the whole gaol, and directing that 
 the gaoler shall enter into a bond of 200Z. to the treasurers 
 of the county for the due performance of his office, &c. 
 
 Every sheriff had his right confirmed of appointing his 
 gaoler, who might be styled the farmer of the gaol, or 
 head of the working parties, the letter-out of the rooms, 
 vender of eatables and drinkables, and extortioner general. 
 Females often took or undertook the management of gaols. 
 Some of the largest gaols were in Howard's time in the 
 hands of females. The under-sheriff usually received 40/. 
 a year for his opportunities from a gaoler. Are we to 
 wonder that the renter addressed himself in earnest to repay 
 himself for his outlay, and remunerate himself for his services 
 and labours ? * 
 
 Beds were never thought of for prisoners. Often there 
 was no straw. When the window-tax had become a great 
 fact, gaolers who paid the taxes looked to their interests. 
 Howard found the debtor's ward at Gloucester without any 
 windows ; a part of the plaster wall was broken through to 
 let in light, t 
 
 In Ludgate Prison, enlarged by Dame Agnes Foster 
 between 1454 and 1463, a copper plate had recorded : — 
 
 " So that for lodging and water prisoners here nought pay, 
 As their keepers shall all answere at dreadful doomesday.'' 
 
 The gaoler was really a very important personage. Im- 
 prisonment now wholly depends on the judges and ma- 
 gistrates. In 1630 another party had authority. Some 
 prisoners against whom the grand jury found no bill, — some 
 whose prosecutors did not appear against them, — after having 
 
 * Noted felons were shown at 2(?. a head, 
 t Hepworth Dixon's Life of Howard. 
 
174 SOCIAL niSTOET OF THE SOUTHERN COUXTIES. 
 
 been confined for months, were dragged back to gaol, and 
 locked up till they should pay sundry fees to the gaoler. 
 These fees were the cause of imprisonment, apart from crime 
 or debt. 
 
 " 3. That the gaoler shall take allowance of a penny a 
 day in bread for no more prisoners under his charge than 
 the law doth require ; and that the same poor prisoners shall 
 have their full allowance in Ranged bread after the rate of 
 twelve to the dozen, according to the assize " {i. e. price, &c. 
 fixed by the magistrates at that date). 
 
 " 4. Also that the gaoler for such bread as he shall serve 
 to the rest of the prisoners under his charge shall not take 
 above a penny profit to himself upon every dozen, which 
 shall be made according to the assize. 
 
 " 5. Also that no gaoler shall make or brew any beer 
 within the house of the gaol or precincts thereof that he 
 serveth the prisoners withal, but shall take it from some 
 brewhouse in the town, the best beer, after the rate of 
 12s. the hogshead, whereof he shall utter and sell to the 
 prisoners an ale quart for a penny ; and the small beer at 
 six shillings, wherof he shall sell to the prisoners two quarts 
 for a penny, according to the statute ; which rates shall be 
 uttered by the justices as they shall see cause." 
 
 These regulations are similar to those appointed for tipplers 
 or alehouse-keepers. 
 
 " 6. That all the lodging chambers which were built for 
 the mainprize shall be converted to that use, and no gaoler 
 shall take above 4<f. a week of any one prisoner that lieth 
 or lodgeth in any one of those chambers for his lodgings, 
 nor above &d. a week of any one that lieth or lodgeth in 
 the rendezvous chambers." 
 
 We shall find that a poor clergyman named Russell, 
 who lay in gaol for debt, had a small sum allowed by the 
 magistrates for his religious exercises, and besides a further 
 sum of 3Z. 6s. 8rf. for his chamber. We may suppose how 
 little acceptable the religious duties performed by a gaoler, 
 as by order 7., would prove. 
 
 " 7. Also that the keeper or his deputy shall read one 
 
GAOL REGULATIONS. 175 
 
 chapter and Common Prayer every day, morning and 
 evening, unto as many within his charge as may conve- 
 niently be assembled to hear him. 
 
 " 8. For swearing and cursing, every prisoner so offending 
 to be punished according to the law. 
 
 " 9. Also that no common tippling house for townsmen 
 or strangers, nor playing at fives, bowles, or other unlawful 
 games, shall be kept or allowed within the gaol or precincts. 
 
 " 10. Also for such prisoners as shall detect any that 
 shall intend to make an escape, or shall discover any 
 dangerous places or persons, for the better safety of the 
 inhabitants of the county, to have favour, and to be well 
 lodged, and his service commended at the assize or sessions 
 where he shall be tried. 
 
 "11. Also that the gaoler shall keep a ledger book of 
 all prisoners committed to his charge ; and by whom they 
 were committed, how punished, and when and by whom 
 discharged, and at every sessions to be ready to give his 
 accompt therein. 
 
 " 12. Also that the said house of the gaol and mainprize, 
 being first well repaired by the county, shall be kept in due 
 and orderly reparations, and the chambers and sinks thereof 
 to be kept scoured and free from ofience, by the keeper or 
 his servants, and so left well repaired, scoured, and cleansed 
 at the end of the year, when the possession thereof shall be 
 required. 
 
 " 13. That the fee of 20s., heretofore exacted by the 
 keeper upon every commitment to the gaol for felony, or 
 for want of bail, or for the first week's lodging and diet, 
 shall be no more taken by the keeper, nor by any other or 
 greater fees than the law doth allow, as namely, not above 
 6s. 8d. for a common commitment in court, nor above 
 13s. id. upon the delivery of any other criminal offender 
 after his trial. 
 
 " 14. Also that at every Easter sessions yearly the 
 treasurers of the county shall be nominated and appointed 
 to be supervisors of the gaol for the year following, and 
 shall at the least four times in the year visit the gaol, and 
 
176 SOCIAL HISTOEY OF THE SOTJTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 certify the breach of any of the orders aforesaid if cause 
 require." 
 
 The set religious duties performed in the Dorset gaol 
 were comprised as already shown, in the reading the chapter 
 and Common Prayer by the keeper or his deputy as by the 
 7th order for the regulation of the same. However, in 1628, 
 a minister, Mr. John Russell, having become a prisoner for 
 debt in the sheriff's ward, the opportunity was seized by 
 the magistrates of procuring regular religious instruction- 
 As the law then stood, many years might elapse and find the 
 debtor still pining in hopeless captivity. Mr. Russell was 
 allowed a yearly sum of 61. I3s. Ad. for public and private 
 religious exercises, and a chamber toward his better mainte- 
 nance and relief. Now, as the governor Devenish let out 
 everything, the treasurer was empowered to pay the chief 
 functionary 3?. 6s. 8d. yearly for the minister's chamber. 
 
 Two years subsequently the sheriff's ward was cut off 
 from all communication with the other parts of the building. 
 Mr. Russell still lay in gaol, and was by this alteration in 
 the prison shut out from performing his duties; perhaps 
 more so by the voluntary and acceptable services of William 
 Benn, clerk parson of All Saints, Dorchester, who now had 
 the lOZ. assigned to him which had been before paid for the 
 services of Mr. Russell. 
 
 We ought not to expect more than the acknowledged state 
 of advancement and progress of the particular time. The 
 Dorset worthies had doubtless cleansed their Augean stable 
 of much that was bad. The era was not late enough for us 
 to expect the setting in play any reformatory plans. The 
 fallen prisoner lay without the benefit of any system to raise 
 him, to rescue and protect him from his own antecedents. 
 
 We have nothing about the care of those who were " sick 
 and in prison" at Dorchester. A few years elapsed, and 
 Mary Blake, the schoolmistress of the " Taunton Maids," 
 sank amidst the felons, with many others of the unfortunate 
 Monmouth followers and idol worshippers, a victim of small- 
 pox. According to general accounts of such places, each was 
 a lazar-house of every loathsome and infectious pestilence. 
 
REWAKDS TO PKOSECUTOKS. 177 
 
 The poor afflicted lady died in the felons' quarters, then the 
 nurseries of every crime. 
 
 At Exeter in 1775 there was an infirmary, and a surgeon 
 who, hardly will it be credited, was hy contract excused 
 from attending any prisoner sick of the gaol fever ! As well 
 might our gallant defenders contract to serve, except when 
 there happened any serious warfare. A female gaoler at 
 Exeter paid 22Z. to J. Dennis RoUe, Esq., as a grantee from 
 the duchy of Lancaster for the felons' gaol, though this 
 gentleman possessed an estate granted for the purpose of en- 
 abling that very prison to be upheld in a state of security 
 and conveniency. Two sailors, who had been fined Is. each, 
 had 11. 15s. 8rf. each to pay for prison fees ; which not being 
 able to do, they were detained. 
 
 At length the venerated Howard called attention to the 
 gaol system. No gaoler could be found who received a 
 salary ; all lived by fees. No precedent coald be found for 
 charging a county with the expenses of a salary to a respect- 
 able keeper. Till a bill passed for abolishing gaolers' fees, 
 about 1773, no true reform could be hoped for. 
 
 Whether the efiect of much that has been done has been 
 to render the condition of criminals undergoing what is sup- 
 posed to be punishment, in many respects more comfortable, 
 if not actually more desirable, than that of the poor but 
 honest labourer, is beside our present subject. 
 
 Reioards offered to the Prosecutors of Offenders. 
 That self-interest is the mainspring of human action must 
 have been well understood by the Dorset magistrates in 
 1639. They show by their proceedings great wisdom in re- 
 medying the evil set forth. To toil without any hope of 
 reward has ever proved fatal to exertion ; to hold out certain 
 gains acts as a sure stimulus to work success in the desired 
 arena. 
 
 At a general sessions of the peace held at Blandford in 
 1639 (13 Charles I.) the magistrates set forth that sundry 
 
178 SOCIAL HISTOEY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 good laws and statutes are not put in execution as they 
 ought to be, because the doing thereof is chargeable and the 
 prosecutors receive no reward for their pains and trouble. 
 
 The court, for the encouragement of prosecutors of 
 offenders, with the consent of Francis Gape, gent., deputy- 
 clerk of the peace of Dorset, agreed that no fee should be 
 taken henceforward from prosecutors, and that every prose- 
 cutor shall receive*from a sixth to an eighth part at the least 
 of every fine or penalty hereinafter mentioned : — 
 
 Offences. 
 
 Of any innkeeper or alehousekeeper that sells not a quart 
 of his best beer and two quarts of his ordinary beer 
 for Id. - - ... 
 
 Unlicensed alehousekeeper - . . - 
 
 Suffering a townsman or other to tipple in an inn or ale- 
 house ----- 
 
 For drunkenness - - - 
 
 For tippling (ten groats) . . - - 
 
 Barrel of beer sold by a brewer to an unlicensed ale- 
 housekeeper (a noble) . - - 
 Keeping unlawful games . . - - 
 Using unlawful games . - . - - 
 Neglect of constable or tythingman to search monthly 
 
 after unlawful games and gamesters - - - 40 
 
 Where a constable or tythingman willingly suffers a rogue 
 
 to pass unpunished - - - - - 20 
 
 A person opposing the punishing of a rogue - - 100 
 
 Giving alms to a vagabond, and not sending or bringing 
 
 him to the officer to be punished - - 10 
 
 The overseers of the poor neglecting to meet monthly to 
 confer about the better relief of the poor, and for 
 neglecting to set the poor to work, and for neglecting 
 to place out apprentices, or for any other neglect of their 
 office - - - - - - 20 
 
 For opposing and hindering the setting the poor to work 100 
 
 And of all other sums of money which by any other 
 laws or statutes are given and limited to the poor people.* 
 There was formerly a county marshal, who was so useful 
 * Mr. T. Hearn, " Qui Quondam." 
 
 Fines. 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 20 
 
 
 
 20 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
TREATMENT OF UNDEE-TENANT8. 179 
 
 in Dorsetshire about 1632 in the searching out and appre- 
 hending rogues and vagrants, that twenty or thirty shillings 
 were voted to him for his good service.* 
 
 There was a standing order of vestry at Liverpool to 
 prosecute all robbers, shoplifters, and housebreakers at the 
 parish expense, when discovered. In 1760 the state of that 
 town required some steps to be taken, f 
 
 The Treatment of Under- Tenants or Incomers. — The Regu- 
 lating the Population by restraining them from Marriage, — 
 Each Cottage to have Land attached. 
 
 When, in the course of events, the religion of the land 
 was changed, and the poor had no longer the same clergy 
 and religious houses to look to in distress, public officers in 
 the several towns and parishes undertook the distribution of 
 the funds committed to them by voluntary sympathy for the 
 relief of destitution. In 1572 an act was passed for a com- 
 pulsory assessment for the poor. 
 
 This must have produced an immense effect upon commu- 
 nities. The inhabitants of boroughs now comprehended that 
 they might be taxed, in a way not experienced before, to a 
 great extent ; and that the remedy against this evil was in 
 their own hands. 
 
 They determined to regulate the numbers of those who 
 resided and those who were employed in their borough, in 
 order to provide for their own due protection against being 
 burdened ; as modern times have furnished examples of, when 
 half the rental has been known to be sacrificed to the main- 
 tenance of the poor. 
 
 Absolute in the exercise of the power reposed in them, the 
 borough magnates turned out those whom they judged likely 
 to become chargeable, and made orders and bye-laws for this 
 object. Viewed apart in court and hustings books much 
 savours of cruelty ; but let the whole be viewed in connec- 
 
 * Mr. T. Hearn, " Qui Quondam." 
 "(■ Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire. 
 N 2 
 
ISO SOCIAL HISTORT OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 tion with the subject, and then a fear of ill consequences, and 
 a desu-e to protect themselves after the manner of the time 
 from a pauper population, will be apparent. Do not inha- 
 bitants of parishes and towns in the present day decline to 
 employ those who will by such means gain a settlement, and 
 be likely to lessen the value of property when they and their 
 families have become chargeable to the parish ? 
 
 A few entries wUl suffice to show the summary manner in 
 which these under-tenants, incomers, or lodgers, as we now 
 style them, were treated. 
 
 The lodging of strangers was among the evils complained 
 of at Brighton about the year 1580. The townsmen little 
 dreamed of future inroads of visitors of all classes and either 
 sex who would not stop for this inquiry. 
 
 " No under-tenants or incomers were to be admitted at Brighton 
 till the oppynion of the conestable and churchwardens had been 
 first set down in writing, that such under-tenant was thought to 
 be of sufficient ability to maintain himself or family without 
 burthening the town." 
 
 A.D. 1592, Andrew Ham of Lyme was directed to re- 
 move his sister from his house, — subpoena 40*. 
 
 William Martin to remove Anne Dolman, 5*. 
 
 It was finally ordered in 1584 that no person do take in 
 any under-tenant into his house at any time without Mr. 
 Mayor's licence, under pain of 10s. ; and this sum was raised 
 in 1594 to 40s. 
 
 At Leicester the mayor chose two discreet persons to 
 search their ward every month to discover under-tenants. 
 
 When a trespasser within the precincts was detected the 
 process for expelling him was simple. 
 
 Henry Webb, the new tailor at Lyme, had a day given 
 him, in 1595, by which day he was to depart the town. 
 
 " The jury made a presentment in 1597 that one Clattey 
 had received into his house a man and his wife ; and William 
 Skorch harboureth his wife's sister, a maisterless maid ; and 
 Joan Peter, a maisterless maid, a wrangler from house to 
 house, and a common tale-teller. 
 
 " Also they present that Edward Borough keepeth a young 
 child in his house, which is not to be harboured, and 
 
FORCED REMOVALS. 181 
 
 Poynler doth the like; and Wm. Crewe keepeth his 
 mother in his house, which is not to be harboured, and 
 Poynter doth the like ; and that John Domett likewise 
 harboureth his wife's sister ; and Mary, Mrs. Barret's ser- 
 vant, is not removed, being often warned and commanded to 
 depart the town. George Hoop harboureth Thomas Tucker; 
 and that Mary Cooke, a maid maisterless, being a common 
 picker and filcher, is harboured by Thomas Lacy." 
 
 Idea quilibet eorum in misericordid. So each is fined ; 
 And that Christian Clattey, a maisterless drab, be presently 
 removed ; and that Wm. Goldsmith's daughter and children 
 do the like. 
 
 1598. Also they present that Mr. Robert Hassard hath 
 taken in an under-tenant contrary to the order, 12c?. 
 
 In another place, " All these to be presently avoided." 
 
 To no purpose did the head of a family secure a good ser- 
 vant if the authorities feared future inconvenience as likely 
 to arise from that quarter. 
 
 The seaport town Eye was surrounded for miles by 
 forest in Tudor reigns. A man who resided there, practising 
 the calling or profession of a " husbandman," was ordered to 
 depart the town, " the place not being fit for such an arti- 
 ficer." * It may be well asked how did such forced removals 
 terminate ? The answer is, in poverty, grief, and death ! 
 
 The following entries from Lyme further illustrate the 
 subject : — 
 
 "The jury present, a. n. 1592, Eleanor Ellyot, widow, for not 
 having turned away her maid servant as she had been ordered 
 to do. To be done by next holyday, under pain of 5s." 
 
 " Item, presentant qd. Ellinor EUyot, vidua, non removit a ser- 
 vicio suo servam famulam suam sicut ad ultimam ei precipie- 
 batur." 
 
 " 1597. Item, that Mr. Mayor do cause aU those persons all ready 
 come in (according to the words of the order, without the con- 
 discent of the mayor and his brethren) to be presently voided, 
 upon pain to forfeit for any of them not so to be put away, 
 40s." 
 
 * Horsfield's Sussex. 
 K .3 
 
182 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 In all our borough towns there was precaution taken 
 against the being burdened with families under the poor 
 act. In 1617 an inmate at Weymouth was ordered to be 
 removed, or else the landlord to give a bond that the party 
 should not become chargeable. In 1647 John Wall, mer- 
 chant, of the same borough, was fined 201. for taking in one 
 Henry Tizer, with his wife and children, likely to be charge- 
 able, and would not send them away. 
 
 In Norfolk, to prevent the necessity of strangers being 
 taken in to lodge, a tenement for an inn was provided by the 
 corporation at Norwich.* These strangers were doubtless 
 useful, so they were admitted and placed under surveillance. 
 
 Some men preferred jobbing about as casual labourers. 
 The jury of Seaford presented for the offence, viz., " living 
 at their own hands." The parties were ordered to get into 
 service within a fortnight. 14 Charles I. 
 
 In 1614 Batten the dyer had not removed out of the town, 
 as he was enjoined the last law-day, and therefore he was 
 amerced 40*. Several others were amerced 31. for not 
 having removed their inmates. 
 
 So late as 1697 several foreigners, i. e. strangers or in- 
 comers, were presented for residing at Lyme. No under- 
 tenants at Castle Combe were to be taken in in Charles I.'s 
 reign without giving security that they should not become 
 chargeable. The practice of most boroughs coincided on 
 this point. By the 13 & 14 Charles II. a stranger that 
 rented a tenement of 10/. a year, or could give security 
 against his becoming burdensome, could not be removed 
 within forty days of his arrival by the magistrates upon 
 complaint of the parish officers. 
 
 The persecution of needy persons likely to become 
 chargeable to a parish, and of those who harboured any 
 one, led to some persons actually wanting a habitation and 
 to acts of great inhumanity, even to danger of perishing 
 from exposure to the weather while compelled to sleep in 
 open fields and under hedges. So determined were the inha- 
 
 " Blomfield's Norfolk. 
 
REGULATING THE POPULATION. 183 
 
 bitants of towns and parishioners of country places to pro- 
 tect themselves, — often perhaps a clique were alive to their 
 own interests, — that much injustice, and doubtless cruelty, 
 resulted. A humane or public-spirited clergyman, who had 
 patronised a poor, perhaps useful family, appears to have 
 been severely taxed. 
 
 " Beaminster, Mich. Quar. Sessions, a. d. 1625. 
 " It is ordered by this court that Mr. Jefferies, parson of 
 Beere Hackett, within this county of Dorset, clerk, shall, within 
 one month next, give securitie to the overseers of the poore of the 
 said parish of Beere Hackett, to defend them in time to come 
 against anie charge or burthen which male arise or be, by reason 
 that he hath received into the said parish one Christopher Sprage, 
 a man of no worth [i. e. having no property], with seaven children 
 and three apprentices, verie Ukely to be chargeable to the parish ; 
 which, if he shall refuse to do, that then the said overseers shall 
 have power, by vertue of this order, to rate the said Mr. Jefferies 
 to the poor at iis. or iis. Y\d. per week more than his ordinary rate, 
 and so to continue untill he shall remove them out of the said 
 parish." * 
 
 Corporators thought they knew what the constitution of 
 a town should be as to the elements of which it was composed. 
 
 The common, as it seems to us, right of moving into 
 any town where a prospect opens for our labours, was not 
 formerly enjoyed without certain payments for liberty or 
 licence to set up one's calling. In a curious survey among 
 the archives of Weymouth is given "the names of such 
 tradesmen and artificers as have liberty for them, their 
 children, and apprentices, to use only their trade within this 
 town, being no freemen within the same, 1617." 
 
 We have here the proportion the corporation thought fit 
 of the several tradesmen. The surgeons (barbers without 
 doubt) are placed with the mechanics. 
 
 14 tailors. 5 weavers. 
 
 4 caps (cappers). 6 joiners. 
 
 14 ship carpenters. 6 bakers. 
 
 * Mr. T. Hearn, " Qui Quondam.'' MS. Book of the Dorset Sessions. 
 
 N 4 
 
184 SOCIAL HI8T0EY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 7 shoemakers. 7 tanners. 
 
 2 blacksmiths. 1 chapman. 
 
 2 surgeons. 1 brazier. 
 
 1 wheeler. 4 helliers. 
 9 butchers. 
 
 In spite of all this care to exclude strangers, it is evident 
 that the civic authorities might meet with disappointment as 
 to the number of the poor, from too many couples of towns- 
 people marrying and having families. This difficulty was 
 not insurmountable in the Stuart reigns. 
 
 At Yarmouth the corporation undertook to regulate the 
 increase or decrease of the population to the wants of their 
 town, anticipating, like Malthus, a possible supply beyond 
 the demand ; and those enactments for the nation at large 
 which that gentleman's followers prophesy will one day be 
 positively required. In 1625 an order was made that no 
 poor people should be married unless they should first pro- 
 cure the handwriting of the alderman and chief constable 
 of the ward wherein they lived, for that purpose ! 
 
 Craftsmen or operatives about to set out from their own 
 parish to look for work in other parts procured a document 
 signed and sealed by well-known parish officers and pa- 
 rishioners. This set forth, in scrivener's language, the inten- 
 tion and object of the party in leaving home, prayed good 
 treatment, &c. What rendered the formal document so 
 serviceable was, that those whose signatures were attached 
 acknowledged the parishioner as their own, and not leaving 
 it doubtful if he were not creeping into a town under pre- 
 tence of seeking work, but in reality to obtain a settle- 
 ment. 
 
 The following extract will explain the decision of the 
 court respecting the old law enjoining cottages having land 
 around them for the inmates ; a provision intended to se- 
 cure the neighbourhood from a great increase of parishioners, 
 and from the depredations of cottagers without gardens or 
 land to cultivate. The quantity of land assigned would 
 now be judged too great for labourers, and rather as likely 
 to convert them into small farmers. In 1627 Roger Crocker, 
 
shoemakers' leather. APPRENTICES. 185 
 
 of Fontmill, was convicted for erecting a cottage within the 
 manor of Fontmill " without having four acres of land con- 
 tinually to be occupied with the same. This court doth 
 therefore order that the said Roger Crocker shall forthwith, 
 upon sight hereof, remove Jolliffe Toogood and his family 
 (whom the said Roger hath permitted to inhabit therein) 
 out of the said house, and hereafter not to suffer him or any 
 other person or persons whatever to inhabit in the same." 
 
 In some other similar infractions of the law the parties 
 are peremptorily ordered to puU down the cottages so 
 erected,* 
 
 The Shoemakers faulty in respect of their Leather. 
 
 In 1597, there were complaints of the leather being badly 
 dressed, and so not wearing well when made into shoes. 
 The jury of Lyme presented the shoemakers as " faulty," in 
 not causing their leather to be well curried ; upon which 
 they were fined 12rf. each. Again the same year, 6rf. each; 
 and the following year the curriers were fined 20d. each. 
 
 Cordwainers or shoemakers often used the mystery of 
 tanners and curriers ; hence the justice of amercing them for 
 using badly-dressed leather. 
 
 Tanners used to keep hides in the tan-pit a year or fifteen 
 months; but it was a subject of complaint in 1548, that 
 hides were then tanned in three weeks or six weeks. An 
 act was passed requiring tanners to keep hides nine months 
 in the pit. 
 
 Some mention of Apprentices. 
 
 The inhabitants of borough towns, besides advantages 
 over country persons arising from privileges and from asso- 
 ciating in a community, had an importance assigned them by 
 the legislature. Their burghers and craftsmen could not 
 lower their calling by the associating with them persons in- 
 ferior in station to themselves, as some low professional men 
 
 * Mr. T. Hearn, " Qui Quondam." MS. Book of Dorset Sessions. 
 
186 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 now often do. They were restrained by an act of Parlia- 
 ment passed in 1405 from receiving the child of any man 
 or woman out of the borough as apprentice to any craft, 
 unless the parent had 20s. a year in- land. This was re- 
 pealed in the reign of Henry VII.* 
 
 Those who followed a handicraft business as masters were 
 subject to many regulations in respect of their apprentices. 
 Great restriction, as to the class and residence of those whose 
 sons were to be received as apprentices once existed. The 
 laws upon this point were relaxed before the reign of 
 Elizabeth. 
 
 Borough laws, which indeed comprehended all subjects, 
 did not, in the matter of apprentices, furnish an exception. 
 Many orders and regulations exist, which prove that much 
 good sense and good feeling were employed to procure a fair 
 arrangement between master and apprentice. Apprentices 
 were to be taught the use of the bow. While the richest 
 persons in the west buy sahnon as a delicacy at a high 
 price, so that it is an expensive luxury, our town worthies 
 carefidly legislated, and no doubt it was requisite, that ap- 
 prentices should not eat salmon more than three times a 
 week for dinner when it was sold at Id. a, pound. Oiir 
 rivers then abounded with salmon. This fish was brought 
 to Lyme by the boat-load in the reign of Elizabeth. Some 
 hard masters had no doubt given their apprentices salmon, 
 when a glut in the market, till they were surfeited, and 
 the hardship was much complained of. Apprentices were 
 not to keep fighting-cocks for the first seven years of their 
 time, nor hunting-dogs. They were to wear no long or 
 short wigs above 15s. in value, and no point-lace. 
 
 Some lines of business were judged to require a longer 
 apprenticeship than others. For instance, an apprentice to 
 a glover was bound for seven years. He was to be clad in 
 every particular and well fed, have I2d. a year, and clothes 
 for working-days and holy-days. t 
 
 In 1608 John Damon of "Weymouth, shipwright, took W. 
 
 * Blomefield's Norfolk. 
 
 t Lyme Huntings Book, a.d. 1592. 
 
IRISH TRAMPS. 187 
 
 Moatyer apprentice for ten years. He was to find him 
 meat, drink, linen, woollen hose, shoes, and all other things 
 necessary ; and at the end of the term of ten years to allow 
 him four suits of apparel, linen and wooUen, to pay him 20s., 
 and to allow and deliver him his axe, an adze, an auger, a 
 cauUdng-iron, a maUet, a clarshammer, a church-clummer, 
 and a gimlet.* 
 
 An orphan was apprenticed at Marlborough, in the reign 
 of Charles I., to a maker of bone-lace, for eight years, j This 
 must haye been soon after the introduction of the art of 
 making that new article. 
 
 Apprentices were associated with the masters and their 
 families, and not, as in the present day, apprentices in name; 
 but knowing nothing of their master's household. The send- 
 ing out apprentices to glean was an abuse which the farmer 
 groaned under. How this primitive custom came to be per- 
 verted wiU appear under its appropriate head. 
 
 Town apprentices were to be preferred by an order made 
 at Lyme in 1618 : " No artificer or trader within the town 
 is to take any apprentice from out of the town if there be 
 any one fit in the town to serve him, unless he first have the 
 leave and goodwill of the mayor and capital burgesses. Any 
 one violating this order shall not open his shop windows any 
 more within the town." 
 
 In the year 1660 Thomas Newton of Lyme, having ven- 
 tured upon what the borough legislators had forbidden, 
 became the subject of a presentment. He kept a tailor's 
 trade in the town without serving an apprenticeship there ; 
 a thing not allowed. 
 
 Parties of Irish wander about. 
 Irish tramps infested our counties in 1629, and prove to 
 have been types of those parties who lately roamed about 
 here after the great potato famine and fever. 
 
 * Sherren Papers. 
 
 t Waylen's Hist, of that town. 
 
18S SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Some of the latter peaceably progressed in family par- 
 ties till, meeting other parties of their countrymen, angry 
 words, unnecessarily used, led to attacks upon each other 
 and an indiscriminate knocking down of unoffending way- 
 farers. 
 
 Treolan Mac Brean and divers other Irish people were 
 taken in the town of Sherborne wandering, as dangerous 
 persons; for, as it appeared by the oath of Mr. Richard 
 Keives, they had offered violence to divers upon the high- 
 way. It was also manifest that their pass was forged and 
 Sir Ralph Freeman's hand counterfeited. The court ad- 
 judged that as many of the party as were able to undergo 
 punishment should be openly whipped at a cart's tail, and 
 be sent by a pass from parish to parish the nearest way to 
 Minehead (Mynyard) ; where they were to take shipping 
 and to be transported into Ireland, from whence they 
 came.* 
 
 A proclamation of the year 1634, for the speedy sending 
 away of Irish beggars into their own country, is a proof 
 of the evils that were occasioned from this source. Parish 
 account books have many entries of money given to a 
 "company of Irish people," to " Irish men," &c., from 1632 
 to 1648. The disbanding of the Irish army in 1630 occa- 
 sioned many of the complaints about the Irish. 
 
 A Jury recommend a Censorship. 
 
 The grand jury of Bristol, in the year 1681, recom- 
 mended that no printed or written news or pamphlet be 
 suffered to be read in any coffee-house or tippling-house in 
 that city, except such as has been first shown to Mr. Mayor 
 or the alderman of the ward for the time being where such 
 coffee-house is situate. 
 
 Sundry coffee-houses had been noticed, which were de- 
 scribed in this strong language. They were said to be 
 commonly frequented, as well on Lord's days as other days, 
 by many schismatioal and seditious sectaries and other dis- 
 
 *■ J\Ir. T. Hearn, " Qui Quondam." 
 
GLEANERS OF CORN. 189 
 
 loyal persons, where, for their encouragement in tippling, they 
 were usually entertained with false news, lying and scan- 
 dalous libels and pamphlets, tending to the reproach and 
 dishonour of the established religion and of his Majesty's go- 
 vernment, and divers of his great officers and ministers of 
 state. 
 
 We learn from this recommendation, that restrictions 
 upon the liberty of the subject did not always emanate 
 from kings and ruling powers, but from the governed them- 
 selves. A state must be prepared for liberty as well as 
 for other developments which civilisation gives rise to in 
 the course of time. 
 
 Abuses into which Gleaners of Corn fell. 
 The gleaners in the field that has yielded its abundant 
 harvest often present a beautiful picture to the sensitive 
 mind. They often appear as if brought upon the scene to 
 make it complete, like figures in a tableau vivant. We can 
 fancy another Boaz befriending another Ruth. This pri- 
 vilege of gleaning, which has suggested these remarks, has, 
 however, been greatly abused, like too many other pri- 
 vileges. In Charles I.'s reign the magistrates of Dorset, 
 at Easter sessions, in 1635, found their interference neces- 
 sary. 
 
 Their order displays in its recital how human interest 
 operates in creating a complete perversion of the use of 
 worthy objects. Some of these abuses are very striking. 
 People, under pretence of gleaning, refused to work at har- 
 vest work for hire ; some, who engaged to reap corn by the 
 task, secretly agreed with others to glean after them, and 
 took money of them to neglect to gather the corn to- 
 gether ; others would not forbear to glean until the winter 
 corn was mowed together and the summer corn made into 
 rick ; others walked abroad in the night, and carried sheets 
 and great cloths to put the corn in which they stole ; and 
 if the constables offered to lay hands upon any of these 
 wrongdoers, they were threatened with an action at law. 
 The order continues : — 
 
190 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 " Wherefore the court, being desirous to reform those 
 abuses, and, to the end that offenders in that kind may 
 receive punishment, constables, &c., be directed and de- 
 fended in their just doing, the honest and painful husband- 
 man comforted and encouraged, and aged, weak, and infirm 
 poor restored to and maintained in their just and lawful 
 right of gleaning, doth in the first place declare that 
 those gleanings do not belong nor ought to be gathered 
 but by those who have not wherewithal to receive and 
 maintain themselves ; and that masters neither should nor 
 ought to send their servants and apprentices to glean corn 
 to make a private gain or commodity thereby, in defrauding 
 the impotent poor ; and doth admonish the constables to 
 keep the watches duly set, especially in harvest time, and 
 that with able and sufficient men, and not with boys or 
 lewd persons ; and doth further declare and order that such 
 as have not corn nor other especial occasion to be in the 
 fields, and shall be found there in night time, are night- 
 walkers, and may and ought to be apprehended and impri- 
 soned until they find sureties for their good behaviour. 
 And that in harvest time the constables of every township 
 may and ought to cause all such persons as be meet to 
 labour to serve by the day, according to the rate set down 
 for wages, upon pain to him that shall refuse of two days' 
 imprisonment and one night in the stocks; and the con- 
 stable to forfeit forty shillings for not executing his office," 
 &c., &c. 
 
 The sending of apprentices by masters to glean was a 
 gross case of perversion of the original purpose of such an 
 act. A rural police is clearly fore-shadowed by the worthy 
 magistrates.* 
 
 The Prices of Articles of Food, ^c. 
 
 Throughout these pages the actual prices of many articles 
 have been quoted. 
 
 Most persons speak of the good old times as one of 
 
 * Mr. T. Ilearn, " Qui Quondam," Sessions Book in MS. 
 
PRICES OF rooD. 191 
 
 universal cheapness. " Our cathedrals," say they, " cost a 
 mere trifle, and we may see the table in some chapter-houses 
 upon which the master-builder paid his masons each a penny 
 a day :" and they might have added that building materials 
 were equally low in price. Still the cathedrals were costly 
 structures, and much more so than they would prove to be 
 in the present day. The value of money was very different. 
 A pound of the precious metals procured in the reigns of the 
 Plantagenets fifteen or twenty times what it now would : 
 and yet it was a dear time, even much dearer, than the pre- 
 sent ; for the pound was hard to be earned, rents were low, 
 and money surprisingly scarce. 
 
 When the Archbishop of Canterbury chose to visit his 
 lands at Tarring, Sussex, about a.d. 1277, the prices of 
 articles to be supplied by his tenant were settled by agree- 
 ment ; and they appear very low. 
 
 A bushel of wheat 
 
 „ oats 
 
 Carcass of beef 
 Yearling hog 
 4 gallons of beer 
 2 good hens - 
 
 The exact comparative value of money is not known. 
 Was it worth at this date fifteen or twenty times its present 
 value? Perhaps so, or even more. In the archives of 
 Lyme is a small parchment deed, by which a tenant under 
 the mayor of a croft and curtilage of the king's demesne in 
 1338, judging himself over-rated, had his rent reduced from 
 16c?. to 12d. a year. The difference of 4rf. a year was 
 sufficient to cause a deed to be drawn, and the form to be 
 gone through in full hustings court, as now-a-day for large 
 amounts. 
 
 When the knights of Cornwall pulled up to bait, on their 
 ride to Parliament, in the reign of Edward II., it may seem 
 
 * Cartwright's Rape of Bramber. 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 - 
 
 2i 
 
 - 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 - 
 
 8 
 
 - 
 
 1 
 
 - 
 
 1 
 
 - 
 
 1 
 
192 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 very little for these worthies to pay 2d. ; but then it 
 should be known that each received but 2s. 6d. for his whole 
 day's travelling expenses, knight and horse.* 
 
 According to the erroneous system of ancient fiscal policy, 
 every article in a household was liable to be rated, and a pro- 
 portionate part of that value had to be paid in money. This 
 led our ancestors to dispense with every article nearly, ex- 
 cept the necessary and indispensable household stuff. 
 
 Convenience, comfort, luxury, ornament, found no one 
 ready to entertain them : these would have been the cause 
 of intolerable charges, and yielded, as would be found to be 
 the case at any era, to circumstances. 
 
 Roger the dyer, of Colchester f, lived when the most 
 minute taxation on record, that of the year 1300, was made. 
 
 He had in his several apartments but few articles for 
 luxury or convenience. The inventory gives us an insight 
 into the internal economy of a house in the reign of 
 Edward I. 
 
 Roger the dyer (there were then no surnames) had, — 
 
 In his Treasure/ or Cupboard. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 1 silver buckle, price - - 18 
 
 1 cup of mazer (maple) - - 18 
 
 In his Chamber. 
 
 2 gowns - - - - 20 
 2 beds ... half a mark 
 1 napkin and 1 towel - - 2 
 
 In his House. 
 1 ewer with a bason - - 14 
 
 Andiron - - - - 8 
 
 In his Kitchen. 
 
 1 brass pot - - - - 20 
 
 1 brass skillet - - - 6 
 
 1 brass pipkin - - - 8 
 
 1 trivet - - . -04 
 
 * Mr. P. Collier. -j- Morant's History. 
 
TAXATION. 
 
 
 
 In his Brewhouse. 
 
 
 s. d. 
 
 1 quarter of oats 
 
 - 
 
 2 
 
 Wood ashes 
 
 hali 
 
 ■ a mark 
 
 Great fat (vat) for dying 
 
 - 
 
 2 6 
 
 Item. 
 
 
 
 1 cow 
 
 - 
 
 5 
 
 Calf 
 
 . 
 
 2 
 
 2 pigs (each \2d.) - 
 
 
 2 
 
 1 sow 
 
 - 
 
 15 
 
 Billet wood and faggots for firing 
 
 
 1 mark 
 
 Sum 
 
 . 
 
 71 5 
 
 Fifteenth of the above which had to 
 
 
 be paid - - . 
 
 - 
 
 4 9 
 
 193 
 
 What a low state of domestic civilisation does this pour- 
 tray. The taxgatherers took nearly the value of the dyer's 
 cow for one contribution. This man kept some animals to 
 run in his little croft or upon the common. We may readily 
 account for the riots that ensued when the great infringed 
 upon the rights of common which the poor had enjoyed. 
 The effects of vicious legislation can be traced in many points 
 of view. The dyeing vat, the implement of the man's art, 
 was not spared under this taxation. Any new or improved 
 vat would have been set down at a higher value, and the 
 poor artificer would have been taxed for having made progress 
 towards the better discharge of the duties of his craft. 
 Extend this view to every trade, and we shaU find it tram- 
 melled. Roger had no materials used in the dyeing art in his 
 house. May he not have anticipated the visit of the tax- 
 gatherer, and so used up or secreted his stock ? His fuel 
 was perhaps necessarily in store, and he had accordingly to 
 pay 13s. 4rf. England - could not improve under such a 
 system. Let us ask if legislators have not learned to be 
 wiser. We are, by a return, enabled to ascertain what was 
 a CoNSiDEEABLE Man in the reign of Henry VI. 1433. 
 Four commissioners were empowered at that date to summon 
 and tender an oath to persons of quality to keep the peace, 
 both themselves and retainers. 
 
194 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 John Crogg and Thomas Tinhanij of Lyme, Dorset, were 
 placed on the list as considerable men, who were able to 
 dispense 12?. per annum. Let those, who have judged that 
 some error exists as to the low prices of early reigns, be 
 assured that nothing but such low prices could have availed 
 for any one to live upon such an income.* 
 
 A great authority writes that 1400Z., so late as the reign 
 of Henry VIII., would be equivalent to 8000?. in the reign 
 of Queen Victoria. The price of every commodity was 
 soon raised, as the resources of new countries, particularly of 
 Peru, opened out. Rents rose, and the stipendiary bedesman, 
 poor scholars, and that class, could not live upon the salary 
 Avhich amply sufficed only a century before. 
 
 The " commons " allowed to the choristers at Winchester 
 in the reign of Henry VIII. was charged 8d., and that at 
 Eton lOd. a week. There was a suit of livery allowed to 
 each at Christmas. This may appear quite insufficient for 
 maintenance. Let us see how prices were fixed by autho- 
 rity in a country town, Marlborough, in 1524f : — 
 
 Hucksters were to sell — 
 
 d. 
 
 A bushel of oatmeal for 
 
 12 
 
 A quart „ 
 
 0* 
 
 12 eggs 
 
 1 
 
 6 eggs . - - . 
 
 Oi 
 
 Chandlers to sell 12 lb. of candles 
 
 15 
 
 lib. „ - li 
 
 In 1545 the wages of a superior mechanic and a sawyer 
 were Ad. a day ; his meat and drink, in addition, were given 
 him, and they were set down at 3d. 
 
 Valuation of the horses and oxen, the property of the 
 last Lord Delawarr of Offington, Sussex, a.d. 1554 — 
 
 £ s. d. 
 The best horse - 5 
 
 Two others, each - 4 
 
 » Archives of Lyme. f Waylen's Hist, of Marlborough. 
 
CHAEGE8 OF BUILDERS' WORK. 
 
 195 
 
 £ 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 8 
 
 4 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 0* 
 
 Other horses, each 
 Some horses, each 
 A working ox 
 A fatting ox 
 A sheep 
 
 Prices doubled themselves in Queen Elizabeth's reign. 
 
 The charges and prices of builders' work in 1564, the 
 prices at the same place in 1850, and the comparative prices, 
 taking into account the altered value of money, are set down, 
 {Archives of Lyme.^ 
 
 
 Price 
 A.D. 1564. 
 
 Price 
 A.D. 1850. 
 
 Comparative 
 Price. 
 
 
 s. d. 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 A sack of lime 
 
 - 1 
 
 1 8 
 
 4 
 
 Hundred of lathes 
 
 10 
 
 1 3 
 
 3 4 
 
 Lath-nails per thousand 
 
 - 1 8 
 
 8 
 
 7 8 
 
 (Nails of every kind were dear.) 
 
 Healm stones per hundred -0 7 026 024 
 
 Elsewhere called healing 
 stones (used by heUiers). 
 Were these slates ? 
 Crease, each 
 
 Artificers' work, per diem 
 Meat and drink 
 Boy - 
 
 Lead (a. d. 1551) per cwt. 
 A wheelbarrow 
 Lock for the Council-house 
 
 door - 08 000 028 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 
 y 3 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 11 1 9 
 
 3 
 
 1 15 
 
 8 
 
 1 
 
 12 
 
 6 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 Many a page of old diaries and chronicles truly is occu- 
 pied with the inclemencies, remarkable features, sometimes 
 with the benignity of the seasons. The readers of such 
 entries, led away by the perusal of what was almost ordi- 
 
 Parry's Sussex, 
 o 2 
 
196 SOCIAL HISTOKY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 nary, thougUcouched in terrifying language, whenever eclipses 
 and thunderstorms gave employment to the chronicler's pen, 
 have been induced to believe that the vicissitudes of the 
 seasons were in latter centuries greater than they now are. 
 
 Conclusions have been hastily drawn that the weather 
 was once very diiFerent, and the sea more tempestuous. 
 Let it not be forgotten that vessels were, by comparison, 
 mere boats ; and agriculture was on quite a different footing 
 to what it now is. Particular seasons, that now produce no 
 very serious inconvenience to the agriculturist beyond the 
 greater consumption of hay, were attended with great loss to 
 the farmer, who was exposed to the greatest trial in order to 
 subsist his cattle, when long continued frosts and a late 
 spring had produced an unusual backwardness of vegetation. 
 It was not tiU 1657 that Bligh, in his " Improver Improved," 
 pointed out the advantage of growing Clover ; and Sir 
 Richard Weston enlightened our countrymen by an account 
 of the cultivation of Tttenips in Flanders, by which cattle 
 might be fattened in winter. 
 
 Hay sold in the late spring of 1643, at 81. 14s. per ton, 
 nearly the value of three fat bullocks. What was the 
 value of hay in our present money ? May we not conclude 
 that it was at least 17?. a ton. The charge for the run of 
 a horse in salt-grass, or pasture occasionally overflowed by 
 the sea, as Seaton marsh, was about three times more than 
 that of the present day. 
 
 The fluctuation in the price of wheat must have exposed 
 our ancestors to the extremes of famine and plenty at inter- 
 vals of only a few months. It appears almost difficult to 
 realise such changes in our day. An effort may be made 
 by the aid of the following table. It will be seen that 
 wheat was sometimes ten times higher than at others. 
 
FLUCTUATIONS IN THE PRICE OF WHEAT. 
 
 1&7 
 
 A. D, 
 
 Wheat. 
 
 Rye. 
 
 Barley. 
 
 Oats. 
 
 
 ,. d. 
 
 .. d 
 
 s d. 
 
 .. d. 
 
 At Weymouth, 
 
 3 6 
 
 
 2 4 
 
 
 1586. 
 At Barnstaple, 
 
 8 
 
 6 
 
 5 4 
 
 * 
 
 in August, 
 1587 
 
 10 
 
 2 8 
 
 2 3 
 
 1 6 
 
 at Christmas 
 
 2 8 
 
 
 2 2 
 
 1588" 
 
 
 
 
 
 1590 
 
 
 from 
 
 
 
 
 1591 
 
 
 2 8 
 
 1 6 
 
 1 6 
 
 t 
 
 1592 
 
 
 to 
 
 to 
 
 to 
 
 1593 
 
 
 6 8 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 
 1594 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1595 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 
 
 f 10 
 
 7 6 
 
 6 
 
 2 4t 
 
 1696 
 
 \ 12 
 (.15 
 
 
 
 
 Standard, 
 
 
 
 
 
 1597 
 
 9 
 
 6 
 
 5 
 
 5 0§ 
 
 In July 
 
 ri8 
 \20 
 
 14 
 
 13 
 15 
 
 4 
 
 1598 
 
 8 
 
 6 
 
 6 
 
 1 10 
 
 1599 
 
 4 
 
 - 
 
 2 6 
 
 
 1601 
 
 5 4 
 
 
 
 
 1602 
 
 8 8 
 
 
 
 
 1604 
 
 6 8 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 '2 8 
 
 
 
 
 1621 
 
 
 2 6 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 1 3 
 
 1 3 
 
 
 1622 
 
 6 8 
 
 
 
 
 1637 
 
 4 6 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 * Kye was purchased, and sold at a cheaper rate to the poor. Ships 
 
 laden with corn, bound to Spain, were arrested and carried into Wey- 
 
 mouth, that the cargoes might alleviate the distress in the south-west. 
 
 f In 1588 best beef sold at Id. per lb. By the year 1591 provisions 
 
 had become very dear. Pease and beans, in their cods, sold at 12s. a 
 
 bushel. On Whitsunday, for a heifer that had newly calved, 61. 6s. 8d., 
 
 i. e. 19 nobles. 
 
 } The Earl of Bath, by order from the council, fixed at Barnstaple a 
 
 standard price, beyond which no one was to sell corn. This was con- 
 
 sidered an inadequate price ; therefore, of course, no one brought corn to 
 
 the market. It could not be procured for money. In order to prevent 
 
 starvation, corn was sent for from Dantzic. — - Account~book of a Town- 
 
 Clerk of Barnstaple v. Lt/sons. No Malt was allowed to be made. 
 
 § The agriculturist complained of the low prices. Land feU from 20 
 
 to 16 or 17 years' purchase. The poor, who would have been glad a few 
 
 years before of the coarsest rye bread, traversed the market to find out 
 
 the finer wheats. — Sir Symonds D'Ewes. 
 
 o 3 
 
198 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Prices in the Eeicn of Charles II., a.0. 1655.* 
 
 Wheat, per bushel - - - 
 
 Oats - - - 
 
 Malt 
 
 Peas . . - 
 
 Tares 
 
 Beef, per lb. 
 
 Butter - . . - 
 
 Suffolk cheese 
 
 Hops, per lb. - - 
 
 2 doz. wheatears 
 
 A pheasant . - - 
 
 A worthy turkey 
 
 PuUet . . - - 
 
 Duck - ... 
 
 Ordinary at an archdiaconal visitation 
 
 Coachman (coat and breeches) 
 
 Received in lieu of the livery 
 Footman half the wages of coachman. 
 
 Yearly man servant's wages 
 
 Woman cook and chambermaid 
 
 Worker in a garden a day 
 
 Broad cloth, a yard - - - - 
 
 Grey wooUen stockings 
 
 worsted stockings , . - 
 
 Walking boots . . . - 
 
 Shoes . - - - . 
 
 Black Shag hat ... 
 Knitting pair worsted stockings 
 Spinning a lb. wool ... 
 
 Carding a lb. wool .... 
 6 doz. beechen trenchers, some square, some round 
 Saddle, with stirrups, &c., and best Dutch bridle 
 New horse-piUion for a lady ... 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 3 3 
 
 1 10 
 
 3 
 
 3 9 
 
 I 
 
 2i 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 1 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 6 
 2 
 
 4 
 6 
 
 
 5 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 2 10 
 1 
 
 23 
 
 3 
 6 
 
 12 
 
 4 
 
 1 2 
 2 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 1 6 
 8 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 Sussex Archaeol. Rev. Giles Moore's Diary. 
 
TREES. — POTATOES. — CRANES. 199 
 
 Trees fob a Garden in the Reign of Charles II. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Apricock tree 
 
 - 
 
 - 1 
 
 8 
 
 Orange tree 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 8 
 
 Pair royal Windsor ] 
 
 pear tree - 
 
 1 
 
 8 
 
 2 Kentish pippins 
 
 - 
 
 - 2 
 
 4 
 
 2 Flanders cherries 
 
 - 
 
 - 2 
 
 6 
 
 26 roots of Provence 
 
 roses 
 
 - 5 
 
 6 
 
 8 young apple trees 
 
 - 
 
 - 7 
 
 
 
 A mulberry tree 
 
 - 
 
 - 4 
 
 
 
 peach 
 
 - 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 medlar 
 
 - 
 
 - 1 
 
 
 
 2 dozen tulips 
 
 - 
 
 - 3 
 
 
 
 Potatoes, the root which has produced upon mankind and 
 to the politician such immense eflPects of late years, were 
 sold in 1613 at 2s. the lb. Then they were a luxury, and 
 so continued till ninety years ago, when in 1765 Lord 
 Sheffield bought some, and soon after farmers began to plant 
 them in the fields. This novelty experienced the usual 
 fate, viz., that of exciting prejudice against it. At an 
 election at Lewes, potatoes shared with popery the indigna- 
 tion of the people, and " No popery ! No potatoes ! " was 
 the popular cry. One Moore, an Irishman, planted the 
 first field of potatoes in Devon, at Poltimore, where he 
 resided. A few farmers about Chard, in Somersetshire, 
 followed this example about 1784. Potatoes excited so 
 much prejudice in France, from a belief they would bring 
 back leprosy once more, that the growing crop required 
 to be watched for protection. So late as 1816, the cook of 
 a large establishment at Valognes, Normandy, did not know 
 how to dress a present of that root sent from Guernsey. 
 
 Cranes could live here when "England was merry Eng- 
 land;" now, alas! they cannot. The wicked gentry are the 
 cause. By draining the marshes and swamps they have 
 added fine land for the use of man ; but the interest of the 
 cranes has been overlooked. Their feeding ground is taken 
 from them. We strew no rushes as our ancestors did, and 
 
 o i 
 
200 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 why ? — because they do not grow in the well-drained 
 lands. 
 
 Ignorance is a humiliating excuse, at the best, for being 
 insensible to great blessings we daily receive; still it is 
 better than wilful indifference. What is the case with our 
 feeling in respect of the great blessing salt proves to us ? 
 We speak of the monasteries having salt-pans upon the 
 coast, and of salt water, as if it contained nothing but 
 salt and water, while many chemical ingredients enter into 
 its composition. From these salt-pans all that essential 
 condiment, salt, was obtained; but the Lord Abbots 
 used a very inferior article to what the poor man now 
 does, and perhaps not so wholesome, though certain pans 
 were dignified with fine names. That of Otteham, in 
 Sussex, was called "the golden salt-pan." Before salt 
 mines and rock-salt were known and worked, those in Staf- 
 fordshire, &c. being discovered in 1670, the quality was 
 inferior, the price at times much higher. Lymington was 
 the last of the places where sea water was evaporated. In 
 1703, Lymington salt-pan salt sold at 7.?. a bushel. The 
 duty alone was 5*. a bushel, and afterwards this was raised 
 to 15s. per bushel, or, in other words, a duty of thirty times 
 the cost of the article. 
 
 Let money be of what value it may, whether it could 
 purchase ten times or twenty times what it now can, we 
 must come to this point, what facility was there for earning 
 money ? Suppose a bushel of wheat to be the commodity 
 in question, — how long was a man in earning money to 
 purchase it ? What rent was paid for land to enable a gen- 
 tleman to purchase commodities ? 
 
 In Tudor reigns fish occasionally rose so as to equal in 
 price that of the present day. Talcing into account the 
 comparative value of money, this was a famine price. 
 
 The division of labour was not complete, as civilisation 
 was not sufficiently advanced. This state is incompatible 
 with low prices. Cathedrals, well-built houses, clothes, 
 ships, freights, food, generally speaking, cost more by com- 
 parison than they now do. The cheapness and the 
 
WAGES OF AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS. 201 
 
 PLENTY of the olden time are delusions. The good living 
 we read of was such for the rich ; but the poor knew not 
 the white bread, the butchers' meat, some of the cheap 
 vegetables, the cheap coal fire, the resident medical man, 
 and many other of God's blessings permitted to be worked 
 out for the use of man. 
 
 We desire to say, finally, of prices, that the value of 
 money cannot be found with accuracy for all periods of our 
 history. In quoting prices, likewise, great allowance must 
 be made for locality, season, fashion, and many other cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 The price of every article of food and general consump- 
 tion, about the year 1700, was nearly one-third that of 
 1854. Kents, mechanics' charges, schooling, were very 
 low, we may almost venture to say, proportionately low. 
 Clothing, however, was not so cheap in proportion. Tea 
 was about nine or ten shillings a pound. 
 
 Some estates in Dorset that now let for 400Z. a year, 
 about the year 1749 let for 70?. a year. 
 
 The wages of the agricultural labourer at Bow, near 
 Exeter, in 1749, were, when wheat sold from 2s. lOd. to 
 4«. a bushel. 
 
 Man, per diem - - - 
 
 Woman „ - 
 Threshing wheat, per bushel 
 
 „ barley, „ 
 
 Cutting wheat, per acre 
 Man's day's work at harvest 
 Beef and mutton, the best joints, a lb. 
 
 Cheese, per cwt 
 
 Peas, a peck - . - 
 
 Butter in May, a lb. 
 December 
 
 With such wages and such prices the labouring man 
 fared well. From this date prices of every article kept 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 \ 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 2i 
 
 11 
 
 
 
 17 
 
 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 6 
 
202 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 rising, but the labourer's wages remained stationary. It 
 follows tbat every year witnessed a deterioration in bis con- 
 dition. To add to this, the agricultural labourer's habits 
 were unfavourable. He drank to excess at wake, revel, 
 wrestling-match, and every occasion of wonted festivity. 
 
 The first Price Current was published in 1634. In the 
 assize or assessment of prices to be paid for articles of food, 
 it was understood to be that paid in a market. If sold in 
 a shop, not at market time, or on a market day, an additional 
 price was allowed. 
 
 Suppose that the exact equivalent of money in every reign 
 could be found, is there not also its value and estimation in 
 the social scale to be still considered? In the year 1553 a 
 proclamation was sent out licensing merchants and others 
 passing with license beyond the seas to carry four pounds 
 in coin with them to defray their expenses ! * 
 
 We may learn what fortune caused a man to be thought 
 very rich at a later date. This recalls to recollection the esti- 
 mate of what a very rich man possessed years before, and in 
 1838 made by a clerk at Liege. A few years had made a 
 great difference. 
 
 One Argentine or Argenton, of Dorset, was called Golden 
 Argentine because his buckles which he wore in his shoes 
 and boots, and the taggs of his [points] and his lace, were 
 commonly all of gold. He was also called Duke of Bell- 
 more, because he lived under Bellmore Hill. 
 
 The income which caused so much reputation was about 
 500Z. per annum from land, and he was also esteemed a great 
 moneyed man having, as some supposed, above 6000Z. in his 
 purse. 
 
 He kept some three or four men with their cloaks lined 
 through with silk, and their feathers in their caps. 
 
 His wealth was judged to be so considerable in those days 
 as to prove a hindrance to a quiet death.f 
 
 * Procl. Soc. Antiquaries. f Notes and Queries. H. F. Sbeppard. 
 
COINAGE OF TOKENS. 
 
 203 
 
 The Profit made by coining Corporation and Tradesmen's 
 Tokens. 
 
 It is, perhaps, generally known that a little beyond two 
 centuries since a great want of small coin was experienced, 
 upon which retail tradesmen caused tokens to be struck and 
 issued in tin and lead. 
 
 Some projectors issued copper farthings with the king's 
 stamp, having a patent for this; they made an ounce of 
 copper, not worth quite a penny, do the work of twenty- 
 
 specimens of a Town and Tradesmen's Tokens. 
 
 pence in tokens. The patent was disannulled, and the 
 tokens were left upon the subjects' hands. Some were 
 pilloried for having issued tokens without a patent. There 
 were token makers and public farthing token oflSces in 
 London. There was great cheating about taking the farth- 
 ings back that had single rings. Before 1644, when a 
 pamphlet was published, entitled " A Kemedy against the 
 Loss of the Subject by Farthing Tokens, discovering the 
 Great Abuse of them heretofore, &c.," there was 100,000/. 
 out in farthings among the poor. 
 
 Separate works have been devoted to the illustration of 
 
204 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 the curious devices of London and provincial tradesmen 
 stamped upon the tokens now forming interesting collections, 
 such as Mr. Beaufoy's, lately presented to the Corporation of 
 London, &c. Our business lies with the pecuniary benefit 
 or loss attending the issuing this money. 
 
 The corporation of Lyme ordered a barrel of town farth- 
 ings in 1669, fifteen years after the first tradesman of the 
 borough, Amyell Hart, had issued his token, and a second 
 barrel six months after. Both barrels of farthings cost 
 45?. 8*. 3d. A profit of 8/. is acknowledged to have been 
 realised, or 17|- per cent, in the mayor's account. 
 
 The corporation of Poole exceeded this rate of profit. 
 They laid out 10?., and realised just cent, per cent.* 
 
 In spite of old experience, upon a scarcity of halfpence in 
 Ireland in 1724, one Wood obtained a patent for coining 
 halfpence and farthings to the amount of 108,000/. So much 
 alloy was used that the whole were worth not 8000?. The 
 patent was revoked after the publication of Dean Swift's 
 Drapier's Letters. When the tokens, farthings, or mites 
 were not legal coin, the loss mostly fell upon the poor. 
 
 An idle Woman falsely charging a Man with having 
 promised her Marriage is Punished. 
 
 To conduct which inflicts wrong and pain upon any mem- 
 ber of society there is assigned, in many instances, a due 
 punishment. The aggrieved party has, it is true, a remedy 
 prescribed by law, but practically certain classes of society 
 cannot avail themselves of it, owing to want of means ; they 
 are, in a word, debarred from the possibility of availing them- 
 selves of any benefit which the law seems so fairly to 
 hold out. 
 
 The magistrates at Sessions in Charles the First's reio-n 
 could and did address themselves to questions arisino- be- 
 tween parties moving in humble life, very important to them, 
 and who could now-a-day in vain seek redress in the same 
 
 * Sydeuhaiu's History. 
 
REGULATIONS A9 TO WAGES. 205 
 
 quarter. A modern Bridget might continue to charge men 
 with a breach of promise of marriage without legal measures 
 being available against her. This was not so in 1626. Her 
 case was considered, her injurious conduct and mode of life 
 Avere duly estimated, with what result we shall learn. 
 
 " Forasmuch as it hath appeared unto this Court that 
 Bridget Howsley of Langton, spinster, liveth idly and 
 lewdly at home, not betaking herself to any honest course of 
 life, and hath lately falsely and scandalously accused one 
 [left blank in the original] of Honiton, in Devon, challenging 
 a promise of marriage from him, which tended much to his 
 disgrace, and that she is a continual brawler and sower of 
 strife and debate between her neighbours, inhabitants of 
 Langton aforesaid, this Court doth therefore think fit and; 
 order that the said Bridget Howsley be forthwith committed 
 to the House of Correction, there to be set on work and re- 
 main for the space of six whole months, and from thenceforth 
 until she shall find very good sureties for her appearance at 
 the next Sessions, after the said six months shall be expired, 
 or until she shall procure a master that wUl take her into 
 
 The fixing by the Magistrates the Wages of Artificers and 
 Servants, with a full Table of the Rates for the several 
 Classes. 
 After the mortality occasioned by the great plague of the 
 reign of Edward III., the numbers of hired labourers being 
 sadly reduced, the value of labour was much increased. The 
 poor workpeople, no longer villains or slaves of their lords, 
 wished to be better paid for their labour. This was not in 
 those days allowed them. The legislature fixed with pre- 
 cision the rates at which they should work, by the famous 
 Statute of Labourers, a.d. 1352. 
 
 The ruler who should at this present time attempt to fix 
 with precision by edict the price or value of labour, which 
 must be ever changing, would be thought deserving a place 
 in Bedlam. 
 
 * Mr. T. Hearn, " Qui Quondam." 
 
206 SOCIAL HISTOKY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 The master or employer now bargains with his servant or 
 workman as to wages for the labour to be performed, the 
 time, the manner, and all the circumstances. If the condi- 
 tions suit, the two agree ; If not, each goes his way ; there Is 
 no compulsion. Each is free to take his own Interest for his 
 guide. 
 
 This was not so formerly. The party desirous of becoming 
 the employer was not allowed to give what he was willing ; 
 the party wishing to hire himself could not take what he was 
 willing to receive, unless these wages or rate of service 
 agreed with the rates fixed once a year by the magistrates- 
 A list of these rates Is given, by which the extensive appli- 
 cation of the system will be perceived, and the contrast the 
 present system affords may be appreciated. 
 
 Should it be remarked that the present system of letting 
 the rate of wages alone works well, and that In an earlier 
 state of society the opposite system was equally weU suited 
 to the times, a view which is not unfrequently taken, be It 
 known that there Is much to be considered In the case. The 
 two states of society are not such that a parallel can be 
 hastily drawn. The question goes deeper than to the relative 
 value of money at the two several eras. Some would too 
 readily conclude that both parties were satisfied under either 
 system ; that men learn to accommodate themselves to the 
 customs and manners of the times. If this were really so, 
 there would be no melioration, all would go on as before. 
 Wordly wisdom would not be required to remedy any great 
 evUs of society, which In truth there are, the offspring of 
 every era and phase of human life. 
 
 Be assured the fixing by the higher orders what the lower 
 class should receive for their services was a system of class 
 legislation, and began to be viewed as such. That there was 
 an under current of party feeling Is undoubted. A regard 
 to this helps to the understanding an occurrence at Wells at 
 the first outbreak of the war between King Charles I. and 
 the Parliament. 
 
 The first act of the Crown that enabled the country to 
 realise the presence of civil commotion was the setting the 
 
REGULATIONS AS TO WAGES. 207 
 
 commission of array in force. The Marquess of Hertford 
 and Lord Poulett were at Wells in September 1642. There 
 must have been a question raised, amidst much excited feel- 
 ing, about the remuneration assigned to a yeoman. It may 
 be fairly concluded that complaint was made of the rate fixed 
 by the magistrates in this particular, and Lord Poulett found 
 a determined expression of feeling against the unequal and 
 unfair treatment of one class. This active cavalier, in his 
 speech at Wells, was induced to defend the system and enter 
 upon particulars. After much excitement (it is recorded) 
 Lord Poulett, " with many imprecations, oaths, and execra- 
 tions, cavalier-like (in the height of fury)," said that " it was 
 not fit for any yeoman to have allowed him from his own 
 labours any more than the poor moitie of ten pounds a year ; 
 and when the power should be totally on their side, they shall 
 be compelled to live at that low allowance, notwithstanding 
 their estates are gotten with a great deal of labour and in- 
 dustry." Upon this the people attempted to lay violent 
 hands upon him, but a regiment passing at the time most 
 opportunely saved him.* 
 
 The wages of master mechanics, or tradesmen, skilled 
 workmen, artificers, journeymen, or operatives, and of agri- 
 cultural labourers, were fixed annually at the Dorset Easter 
 Sessions ; they did not much vary from year to year ; those 
 given are for the year 1633. 
 
 Let this list dispel the idea that the working labourer or 
 servant only had the amount of his labour fixed by authority ; 
 the master was treated in the same manner. 
 
 The difference in the amount of wages assigned to the 
 mere agricultural labourer, and the artificer or skilled work- 
 man, is less than would be found to be the case in the pre- 
 sent day. The wages within brackets are those of the 
 Statute of Labourers for the year 1444, when it was allowed 
 that " such as deserve less shall take less." 
 
 L No servant of any clothier, woollen-weaver, tucker, 
 cloth-worker, sheerman, dyer, hosier, shoemaker, tanner, 
 
 * State Collection of Pamphlets, Brit. Mua. 113. 69. 
 
208 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES, 
 
 pewterer, baker, brewer, glover, cutler, smitli, farrier, cur- 
 rier, Sadler, spurrier, turner, cooper, hatmaker, feltmakers, 
 bowyer, fletcber, arrowhead maker, butcher, cook, or miller, 
 able to have the leading and government of the rest of the 
 servants retained in the same art or mystery that he is of, 
 for the whole year, shall not take for his wages above 31., 
 and for his livery 10^., meat and drink. 
 
 II. No other servant retained in any of the same sciences, 
 crafts, arts, or mysteries, for the whole year, shaU not take 
 for the same year above 50s. for his wages ; and for his 
 livery, 6s. 8d. ; meat and drink. 
 
 III. No bailiff of husbandry shall take above 31. 10s. by 
 the year J and for his livery, 13s. 46?. [23.s. Ad.; clothing, 5s.] 
 
 IV. No chief hind, carter, ploughman, or shepherd shall 
 take above 21. 13s. Aid. ; and for his livery, 13s. Ad. ; meat 
 and drink. 
 
 V. No common servant of husbandry above the age of 
 twenty years shall take above 40s. by the year ; and for his 
 livery, 6s. 8d. [20s. ; clothing, 4s.J 
 
 VI. No man servant from the age of sixteen years and 
 upwards, and under the age of twenty years, shall take above 
 20s. by the year ; and for his livery, 6s. 8c?. 
 
 VII. No man servant under the age of sixteen years shall 
 take any wages, but convenient clothes, meat, drink, and 
 other necessaries. [Boy under fourteen years, 6s. ; clothing, 
 3s.] 
 
 VIII. No woman servant under the age of sixteen years, 
 unmarried, shall take any wages, but only meat, drink, and 
 other necessaries, as shall be agreed on between them, their 
 master and mistress. [Woman servant, 10s. ; clothing, 4s.] 
 
 IX. No day labourers in harvest shall take for their wages, 
 the man for reaping of corn, above 6d., for mowing of corn 
 and grass, above 6d. the day ; the woman for reaping of corn 
 Ad., and for making of hay 3^., meat and drink, and not 
 above. [Mower 4rf., with meat and drink ; 6d. without ; 
 reaper, 3d. to 5d. ; woman, 2^d. to 4i«?.] 
 
 X. No day labourer at husbandry shall take, from AU- 
 hallowtide to the 25th of March, above 3c?. the day, with 
 
KEGULATIONS AS TO WAGES. 209 
 
 meat and drink ; and from the 25tli of March to Allhallow- 
 tide, 4:d, the day, with meat and drink, and not above. [2d. 
 to 3^rf.] 
 
 XI. A master-mason, a master-carpenter, a master-joiner, 
 a master-plumber, a master-thatcher, every one of them to 
 take, with meat and drink, 6d., and without meat and drink, 
 I2d., and not above. [Mason, 4rf.; master-carpenter, 5^rf. ; 
 master-tiler, 3c?. to 4|rf.] 
 
 XII. A master ship-carpenter from Candlemas to Mi- 
 chaelmas shall not take above 12d. the day, with meat and 
 drink, and 20d. the day without meat and drink. 
 
 XIII. A master ship-carpenter, called a hewer, shall not 
 take above 126?. the day, without meat and drink, and 6c?, 
 with meat and drink ; and from Michaelmas till Candlemas, 
 a shipwright by the day shall not take above 20d., without 
 meat and drink, and lOd. with meat and drink ; and the 
 hewer not above lOd. without meat and drink, and 5d. with 
 meat and drink. 
 
 XIV. None shall be accompted a master workman in any 
 of the occupations aforesaid but such as have good skill of 
 the work, and shall have working under them one or two 
 journeymen, and one apprentice at the least. 
 
 XV. Every other carpenter, mason, rough-layer, brick- 
 layer, tiler, slater, plumber, glover, tailor, painter, joiner, 
 plasterer, lime-burner, brick-burner, tile-burner, cooper, 
 tinker, every of them, shall not take by the day above 5d., 
 with meat and drink, and without meat and drink lOd., and 
 not above. Every apprentice to take by the day, with meat 
 and drink, Sd., and without meat and drink Gd. A pair of 
 sawyers to take by the day, with meat and drink, 8d., and 
 without meat and drink 16d., or else to take for every hun- 
 dred sawing of boards and planks 20d., and of housing 
 timber 2s., and not above. 
 
 XVI. No artificers under the age of sixteen years shall 
 receive any wages, but meat and drink. 
 
 XVII. Every artificer and workman aforesaid to find him- 
 self tools for the work and art of his science. 
 
 XVIII. If any man wiU put his work to task, to give his 
 
 P 
 
210 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 workman 4rf. by the day for meat and drink, and not above 
 the wages above-limited by the day; and every woman 
 working by the day to have 3d. for her meat and drink, over 
 and above the wages above limited by the day : the choice 
 whether he will have them by the day, and find them meat 
 and drink, or else to task at the rates aforesaid. 
 
 XIX. For reaping an acre of wheat to task, 2*. 6d. ; and 
 for mowing an acre of hay at task, I2d., and not above. 
 
 XX. No person shall take, for making an acre of hay to 
 task, above 12d. 
 
 XXI. No person or persons shall take, for threshing of a 
 quarter of barley to task, above 8d. ; and for a quarter of 
 beans and oats to task, above 6d. 
 
 XXII. No person or persons shall take, for threshing a 
 quarter of wheat or rye, above 6d. 
 
 XXIII. That no woman servant unmarried, from the age 
 of eighteen years and upwards to four-and-twenty, shall take 
 above 25s. per annum ; and for her vesture or garment, 5s. ; 
 and from four-and-twenty and upwards, not above 26s. 8d., 
 and for her livery Gs. 8d.* 
 
 Purchasing Corn of great Men. — Famine Prices. 
 
 The exchange of presents, sugar-loaves and conserves, 
 to be returned in venison, between great men and the cor- 
 poration worthies of our borough towns, did not entirely 
 originate in mere civilities. The pleasing intercourse had a 
 stronger bond to unite the parties. Profitable dealings 
 brought the two ranks together ; and the connection with 
 the merchants of the boroughs must have proved very use- 
 ful to the great landed proprietors, in the sale of the super- 
 abundant produce of their estates. 
 
 It is worthy of remark how individuals clang to their 
 order, and acted in concert, particularly where those of an- 
 other class were concerned. 
 
 The following letter from Thomas Lord Howard, after- 
 
 * Mr. T. Hearn, " Qui Quondam.'' Dorset Sessions, MS. 
 
PUBCHASE OF CORN. — HIGH PRICES. 211 
 
 wards third Lord Bindon, Mayor of Weymouth, to the 
 corporation of Melcombe, is a curious example of several 
 points alluded to. The great man employed his influence in 
 favour of one borough before that of another with which he 
 had no connection. 
 
 Sir Amias Poulett, of Hinton House, who is referred to, 
 had been the keeper of Mary Queen of Scots, and had 
 honourably discharged his trust, when some proposition was 
 made by Sir Francis Walsingham, the Secretary of State, 
 about obtaining information through his servant. This wor- 
 thy was governor of the Isle of Jersey, and ancestor of the 
 present Earl Poulett. 
 
 The period offered, viz. seven years, for the agreement 
 brought on the time of want and high prices, which prevailed 
 about the years 1586 and 1587. 
 
 "A.D. 1581. 
 " Thomas Howard, Mayor of Weymouth, to his loving friends 
 of Melcomb.* 
 
 " I understand, by Sir Thomas Leyton, that the merchants of 
 Lyme hath written very earnestly to him to buy his wheat, and 
 offered him 2s. a quarter ready money ; but under Ss. he saith he 
 will not sell it ; but at my desire, if it shall like any of you to 
 have it, you shall pay half your money by our Lady-day, the 
 other half at Midsummer. And so from hence shortly if you 
 lust he will bargain with you, by my request, for five or seven 
 years, at such prices as Sir Ames Powlett selleth, and will give 
 you the quarter-day of payment, beginning at Michaelmas with 
 a third portion, so with like portion to pay quarterly." 
 
 An immediate answer to this was desired. 
 The prices at Weymouth, at one period of the year 1586, 
 were the following : — 
 
 Per Bushel. 
 ' s. d. 
 
 Wheat cried at - - - 3 8 
 
 Barley . - . 2 4 
 
 Malt - - - - 2 6 
 
 Wet fish, per cwt. - - - 16 
 
 Dry fish - - - 9 Of 
 
 * Shen-en Papers. | Ibid. 
 
 F 2 
 
212 SOCIAL HISTOEY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 The arrest of outward-bound vessels with corn falls 
 under another head. It proves how great the scarcity was. 
 The month when the above prices were cried at Weymouth 
 does not appear. In the "West of England, in August of this 
 year 1586, wheat sold at 10s. a bushel! Are we to be sur- 
 prised at plagues sweeping off the attenuated population ? 
 
 An Act to restrain the excessive use of malt passed in 
 1597, which empowered justices in Quarter Sessions to 
 suppress the making of malt, and restrain the number of 
 maltsters. 
 
 Mode of relieving great Want and Scarcity in the Reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 The study of antiquity may be at one era less cultivated 
 than at another, when it may attain to the just name of a 
 mania. However this may be, mankind, while civilisation is 
 retained, will ever delight in learning what their ancestors 
 did in periods remarkable for striking incidents. They may 
 not always desire to know of precedents for imitation, but 
 may seek for facts that will furnish a good subject for 
 comment, perhaps for censure, often for glorification of the 
 present day ; while the admirers of everything by-gone will 
 continue, to the end of the chapter, to see in the past supe- 
 riority over the passing age. 
 
 There was great distress, owing to a scarcity of food, about 
 the year 1587. It was greatly felt in the south-western 
 parts. The means adopted to alleviate the distress claim 
 our attention. 
 
 In 1587, rye, an article of food much in request, was sold 
 to the poor at a reduced price. Every kind of provisions 
 was then at a famine price. The Mayor of Lyme enters in 
 his accompt : — 
 
 Item, that was lost upon 10 peck of rye that was sold to the 
 poor, As. Qd. 
 
 In the early summer of 1587, three English ships, 
 meaning, very probably, vessels, arrested and brought into 
 
GREAT MEN OF THE DAT. — PKEACHEES. 213 
 
 Portland roads certain hulks or vessels of burthen laden with 
 provisions and other goods, as these were in their course 
 bound to Spain. The Mayor of Weymouth, George Tren- 
 chard, Esq., wrote letters setting forth how much the sale 
 of the corn and other victuals would relieve the want and 
 scarcity that prevailed in his part of the country. 
 
 The following great men, R. Leycester, F. Walsingham, 
 Chr. Hatton, C. Howard, Hunsdon, and Ant. Ashley, wrote 
 to the Mayor of Weymouth, approving of his discretion. They 
 directed that the foreigners so detained should be told that 
 
 o 
 
 by the law of nations such an arrest, under the circumstances 
 of the case, was legal, and that they might be compelled to 
 sell their victuals ; still, if they were unwilling to do so, the 
 mayor was to allow them to depart.* 
 
 What the parties determined upon doing is not known. 
 How soon would similar treatment of foreigners on their 
 voyage to other countries produce war in this century. 
 
 During the late famine in Ireland there were cases of 
 robbers going off and boarding vessels at the mouth of the 
 Shannon, which were bound to other towns than their own. 
 This arrest of vessels on the high sea by force to procure 
 food, where the parties deemed it was wanted, drew forth 
 great exclamations at so unheard of (?) a crime. Is there 
 anything new under the sun ? True it is that many novel- 
 ties, as they are called, are proved to have prototypes, 
 
 The Hiring of Preachers. — Early Sermons. — Brawls and 
 Legal Proceedings that ensued. — Tlie Progress of the Re- 
 formation in the Country. 
 
 The great moral and spiritual agent, preaching, which has 
 produced such mighty effects in the Christian world within 
 the last three centuries, was scarcely known before the Re- 
 formation. Religious instruction then began to flow in a 
 copious stream from books, and the untiring eloquence of 
 many who exercised their gift in the pulpit. 
 
 This valued means for the extension of each hearer's reli- 
 
 * Sherren Papers. Letter 2d June, 1587. 
 p .3 
 
214 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 gious knowledge did not quietly and without interruption 
 obtain a firm footing at once when the Reformation had been 
 accomplished. The favourers of the old worship engaged in 
 bitter contests with their opponents, those of the new 
 
 Preaching at St. Paul's Cross. 
 
 learning. While many hung, as if charmed, upon the 
 preacher, others raged at his words, and longed to catch him 
 in some breach of any law or proclamation that prescribed 
 punishment for the offence. 
 
 How such matters were conducted in our provincial 
 boroughs will be the subject of these pages. To other his- 
 torians be the task of recording the proceedings of Courts, the 
 acts of the illustrious, and the scene as laid in the Palace. 
 Court manners and the doings of the nobility there have 
 been aped by the nation at large in every era ; but too great 
 was the distinctiou between royal manners and expenditure 
 for much that has been drawn from them as applicable to 
 humble country life to be correct. A universal desire for 
 
PEEACHER8. — THOMAS HANCOCK. 215 
 
 preaching at length extended over city and province. It was 
 the craving of the age. Local particulars will set forth the 
 state of the country, and how the service was conducted in 
 our parish churches at the time when Is. 6d. was paid at 
 St. Margaret's, Westminster, for the mending the pews 
 broken by the crowding of persons to hear Dr. Latimer.* 
 
 So early as the year 1546, a noted preacher, Thomas 
 Hancock, was nominated by the Crown perpetual curate of 
 Poole, in Dorset. Much will be said of the great effects he 
 produced in that and adjoining counties in succeeding reigns; 
 for soon after his appointment in the reign of Henry VIIL, 
 he was strictly inhibited from preaching. 
 
 Corporations gratified the want of the day. Thus at 
 Lyme Regis, in 1549, there is an entry : — 
 
 Item, paid for a dyner when that the prysse preached here, 
 4«. 8d. 
 
 The worthies of the borough superadded the benefit of the 
 preacher's conversation to that of his pulpit discourse. This 
 priest had been, perhaps, a member of one of the dissolved 
 religious houses on the borders of Dorset, Devon, or 
 Somerset — some gifted man, too well known in his day for 
 it to be required that his name should be set down in the 
 entry, just as another, styled " the prysse," went about to 
 practise the healing art. 
 
 The Court of Augmentation granted pensions to the 
 monks of the several abbeys. The fourteen monks of Ford 
 Abbey, at its dissolution, received pensions varying from 81. 
 to 51. each per annum. The abbot, Thomas Charde or 
 Tybbes, had 801. a year, and forty wain-loads of fire wood. 
 
 If the priest before mentioned had been a member of a 
 religious house, he must have become a preacher of the 
 gospel. The principal men or council of Lyme Regis had 
 shown themselves so remarkable in their religious zeal for 
 the new learning, that they were accounted, as they set forth 
 afterwards in a petition, " heretics for their religion." Queen 
 
 * J. Nichols. 
 p 4 
 
216 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Mary withdrew an allowance of 20/. a year, pressed the 
 Cobb workmen, and removed them for the repairs of Dover 
 harbour, which was accounted a great injury to the 
 borough. The inhabitants of Poole are entitled to the 
 honour of being the first Protestants of these parts ; though 
 divisions ensued. They fell from their profession. Lyme is 
 proved to have aspired to the same distinction from having 
 sent for the preacher, through whom the former town had 
 embraced God's word. 
 
 The scarcity and slackness of preachers was so great, 
 that some of the king's chaplains were appointed to ride 
 circuit about the kingdom to preach to the people. 
 
 In 1552, Robert Taverner, educated at Benet College, 
 Cambridge, and Ch. Ch. Oxon, a layman obtained a special 
 license to preach in any part of the king's dominions. He 
 preached before the Court wearing a velvet bonnet, or 
 round cap, a damask gown, and a chain of gold about his 
 neck. In like manner did other laymen preach.* 
 
 Preaching began to be called in aid of the Government, 
 who, perceiving the grand opportunity for reaching the ears 
 of the subjects, set preachers, by a special order, to the 
 task of correcting the grievance or special sin of the day. 
 This appeared to the king and council in 1551 to be — 
 Covetousness. The bishops in their own persons, and by 
 their preachers, were to assaU this vice, which was thought 
 to be leading men to monopolise corn, promote enclosures, 
 tearing ayay the substance of the church, the universities, 
 and even the hospitals, f 
 
 The pulpit's aid was called in at Edinburgh, in unison 
 with the Court of Session, to denounce the popular pan- 
 tomime of the southern outlaw, Robin Hood, which, with 
 the May games, had been banished. 
 
 Just in the same way the Mayor of Lyme and his coun- 
 cil, the principal men before incorporation, when special 
 occurrences, some great act of sin had disturbed the minds 
 
 * M. TVacott, M.A., "Notes and Queries," Oct. 27. 1855. 
 t Tytler's Edward VI., vol. i. p. 425. 
 
THOMAS HANCOCK. — EAKLT SERMONS. 217 
 
 of those in his little borough, sent for a preacher to assail 
 the startling crime, or fashionable vice, at the critical time 
 for doing so. 
 
 Mr. William Tudbold, mayor, paid in 1551, "at Mystres 
 Pratt'g house upon Mr. Godwyne, xvid." 
 
 We have here, perhaps, the name of " the priest " before 
 alluded to, and the bare cost of his dinner, without hire or 
 travelling expenses, at a tavern.* 
 
 When R. Hunt was mayor, in 1558, John Chylds lost 
 his life at the hands of Henry Chylds, doubtless a relative, 
 perhaps a brother. This man was bound with a cord, set 
 on horseback, and conveyed to Dorchester. This mention 
 of the crime will enable us to understand the following 
 entry : — 
 
 Item, paid to Mr. Handkocke for his sermon that he made in the 
 church by the advice of Mr. Parrot [or Barret] Mr. Eaffe, and 
 Mr. Morrys (principal men) with others, 8s. 
 
 Mr, Hancock the famous preacher's services were duly 
 estimaied. He had been an exile for religion during Mary's 
 reign. His eloquence was bespoke, upon the remarkable 
 occasion before described, for the pulpit ; his dinner was 
 gladdened by a friendly act, the subject of another 
 entry ; — 
 
 Item, for a poteil of wine and a quart of sack that we gave him 
 at Mr. Holcome's at his dinner, 12d. 
 
 Mr. Holcomb was a merchant who served the office of 
 mayor the next year : he entertained the preacher on this 
 occasion. When mayor, he paid for a preacher's dinner 
 6s. 6d. It should be added that the borough worthies par- 
 
 * An able preacher was much valued by comparison likewise with too 
 many others. About the year 1550, the curates appointed by the laity 
 were both ignorant and scandalous in their lives. The people called 
 them " asseheads," " dodipots," and " laoklatins." Strype makes the 
 rustics complain of one that " he slubbereth up the service, and cannot 
 read the humbles " (i. e. homilies). Tytler's Edward VI., &c., vol. i. 
 320. 
 
218 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 took of the same, and enjoyed the conversation of one in 
 whose religious opinions they placed implicit confidence. 
 
 In giving a narrative of the career of Thomas Hancock, 
 from the Annals, Memorials, and Life of Cranmer, by 
 Strype, in which recent information is embodied, th^ state 
 of religious opinion in the south of England wiU be fully 
 set forth. Many things in local histories become intel- 
 ligible after this memoir, or as he has it, " his relations of 
 himself from the last year of King Henry VIII." 
 
 The energetic and diligent preacher, Thomas Hancock, 
 was born at Christ Church, Twinham, in the county of 
 Southampton. After having preached the gospel, and de- 
 claimed against papal abuses in the diocese of two bigoted 
 bishops, Gardiner and Capon, of Winchester and Salisbury, 
 he was suspended by Dr. Raynold, Chancellor to Bishop 
 Gardiner, upon pretence of a breach of the Six Articles ; 
 because he had taught out of the ix. Hebrews — " That 
 our Saviour entered once into the Holy Place, by the 
 which he obtained unto us everlasting redemption ; that 
 he once suffered, and that his body was once offered, to 
 take away the sins of many people, and that one oblation 
 sufficed for the sins of the whole world." Strype remarks, 
 that though all this was mere Scripture, they found it to 
 contradict their notions. 
 
 Archbishop Cranmer licensed Mr. Hancock in 1547, 
 being struck with his diligence and merits as a preacher of 
 the gospel. In the first year of Edward the Sixth's reign, 
 many zealous preachers of the gospel, without staying for 
 public orders, earnestly set forth the evangehcal doctrine. 
 Many of the laity in the borough towns now more openly 
 took a decided part in favour of the new learning. 
 
 Hancock having obtained his license, which every preacher 
 was required to do, or he could only read the prayers, 
 preached in the parish church of his native place, from the 
 16th chap, of St. John — " The Holy Ghost shall reprove 
 the world of sin, of righteousness, §•£., because I go to the 
 Father:' 
 
 How curious a picture does Strype present us with. 
 
THOMAS HANCOCK. — EARLY SERMONS. 219 
 
 Churches were the scenes of the greatest excitement on 
 many occasions, and the passions of earnest, even furious 
 partisans, broke out and found vent in paroxysms of frantic 
 actions and bitter taunts. How happy our time when those 
 who cannot think the same sit apart, and the worship of 
 the whole community proceeds without any drawback, save 
 the lukewarmness of those assembled. 
 
 On the occasion of this sermon in the parish church of 
 Christ Church, Twinham, behold three conspicuous cha- 
 racters : 1. the preacher, Thomas Hancock, in the pulpit, 
 holding forth with great earnestness; 2. the vicar of the 
 parish, Mr. Smith, sitting in his chair before the pulpit, 
 attending to the sermon ; 3. the priest performing mass. 
 
 As we view the parties, can we hope they wiU remain 
 without a collision, or railing, or great uproar ? Our ex- 
 perience forbids us to look for a quiet termination of the 
 service. 
 
 The preacher, Thomas Hancock, declared unto the people 
 the reasons why they made an idol of the host, and were 
 committing most horrible idolatry. The vicar, after this 
 pointed address, could no longer restrain himself, but ad- 
 dressed the preacher in these words : — " Mr. Hancock, 
 you have done well until now ; and now have you played 
 an ill cow's part, which, when she hath given a good mess 
 of milk, overthroweth all with her foot, and so all is lost ; " 
 and with these words he rushed out of the church. 
 
 When we learn what sermons were in the early part of 
 the reign of Edward YI., and who composed the congre- 
 gation, we are led to admire the daring spirit of Thomas 
 Hancock, whose labours terminated not with the discourse. 
 The pulpit vacated, the bar of justice had to be entered. 
 Gospel difficulties mastered, legal subtleties had to be en- 
 countered. He who would expound exposed himself to 
 storms, and the attacks of furious assailants. 
 
 Hancock preached in St. Thomas's Church, Salisbury, 
 at this time. Dr. Oking, chancellor to Bishop Capon, 
 and Dr. Steward, chancellor to Bishop Gardiner, were 
 present. His text was from xv. Matthew, 13. : " Every 
 
220 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be 
 rooted up." The preacher inveighed against superstitious 
 ceremonies, and against the idol at the altar. He called 
 those who kneeled before it horrible idolaters. Whereat the 
 doctors and certain of the clergy went out of the church ; 
 which, Hancock perceiving, he charged them with not being 
 " of God, because they refused to hear the word of God." 
 
 The Mayor of Salisbury, Mr. Thomas Chaffen, came to 
 the preacher after the sermon, — set on, as was judged, by 
 some of the clergy, — and laid to his charge the having disre- 
 garded and behaved contrary to a proclamation sent forth 
 by the Protector, " That no nick-names should be given to 
 the Sacrament, such as Round Eobin or Jack in the Box." 
 Hancock excused himself by saying, that what he spake 
 against was no sacrament, but an idol. The mayor would 
 have committed him but for six honest men being bound for 
 his appearance. 
 
 At the assizes Sir Michael Lyster, the lord chief 
 justice, desired Hancock to procure sureties. The bishop 
 being then on the bench, the preacher requested him, that 
 forasmuch as his trouble was for the word of God, he and his 
 chaplain would be bound for him. The chief justice reproved 
 him and said, if the bishop would be his surety he would 
 not take him. A draper named Dymoke, having asked 
 what the bond was, the judge replied lOOZ. This favourer 
 of the preacher spoke again to this effect, that a hundred 
 would be bound for him ; another exclaimed that a thousand 
 would. Upon this his lordship addressed Hancock in these 
 words : " See what an uproar you make among the people." 
 A conversation ensued between the judge and Dymoke. 
 The latter owned that Hancock had no command over him- 
 self in the pulpit, and he thought would forfeit the bond ; 
 but this enthusiastic supporter of the preacher, in the face of 
 exasperated authorities, exclaimed : " It would never grieve 
 them to forfeit 20?. apiece in such a quarrel." Ten sureties 
 were bound in lOZ. each, and Hancock in 90Z. 
 
 The legal forms having been complied with, Hancock rode 
 to my Lord of Somerset at Sion, who caused the lord- 
 
HANCOCK AT SOUTHAMPTON AND POOLE. 221 
 
 treasurer. Lord Burghley, to write to the lord chief justice to 
 have the bond discharged. 
 
 The intrepid preacher was at Southampton with the lord 
 chief justice, in order to deliver this letter, when the bell 
 rang for the sermon. His lordship asked him if he intended 
 to preach, which he answered in the affirmative. The judge 
 bade him remember that Southampton was a haven-town, 
 and that if he preached there such doctrine as he preached at 
 Salisbury the town would be divided, and so there wotild be 
 a gap for the enemy to come in. 
 
 After a long and angry discussion, in which the lord chief 
 justice said that Hancock should not preach, and that there 
 was one in the Tower (meaning Bishop Gardiner) that he 
 would believe before four hundred such as he, the mayor 
 and his brethren having been sent for, at last a Mr. Gryffeth 
 was brought, who preached. 
 
 The lord chief justice attended, and had no great cause to 
 compliment himself upon the change, for the preacher chal- 
 lenged him openly with suffering images in the church, the 
 idol hanging in a string over the altar, and the people honour- 
 ing the idol contrary to law, with much other good doctrine, 
 to Hancock's delight, who was a hearer. His sureties were 
 discharged. 
 
 A change took place at Poole. Hancock offered a prayer 
 for the town. Many fell from their professions, and divisions 
 had ensued. 
 
 Hancock preaching there in the routine of duty in July 1, 
 1 Edward VI., against idolatry and covetousness from 
 1 Timothy vi., and against the mass which the priest was 
 then performing, he addressed himself to the passing service, 
 and spoke against the real presence. A scene ensued too 
 frequent in that day. 
 
 An aged merchant very rich, Thomas Whyte, who was at 
 the head of the Papists, rose from his seat and left the church, 
 saying, " Come from him, good people ; he came from the 
 Devil, and teacheth unto you devilish doctrine." John 
 Nothrel, alias John Spicer, following him, said, " It shall be 
 God when thou shalt be but a knave." 
 
222 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 The same year on the feast day of All Saints, White and 
 Nothrel, with Thomas Haviland, another influential merchant 
 of Poole, came into church to the priest, commanding him to 
 say DiEiGE for all souls. Hancock commanded the priest 
 the contrary. These merchants said they would make the 
 latter say it. He answered, " Not while they lived." They 
 all three upon this called Hancock knave, and his wife, 
 strumpet.* Some of them threatened — and too intelligibly 
 so in those sad times — what they would cause him to do at 
 the place of execution, f 
 
 The mayor, Mr. Morgan Reed, thrust Mr. Hancock into the 
 quire and pulled the door fast, commanding them to keep the 
 peace. The mayor had much ado to quiet the hurly burly, 
 till he got most of them out of the church, and was himself 
 called a knave for his protection of the preacher. Hancock 
 again had recourse to my Lord Somerset, who referred him 
 to Cecil, afterwards Lord Burghley, from whom he procured 
 another letter, which enabled him to preach in quiet in Poole 
 to the end of the reign of Edward VL 
 
 To preach faithfully (by which is meant according to the 
 real sentiments of the preacher) at St. Paul's cross was often 
 attended, with danger. The celebrated Gilbert Bourne, in 
 the first year of Queen Mary's reign, had the temerity to de- 
 fame Edward VI. and exalt Bishop Bonner; but for the 
 interference of Bradford and Rogers, the subsequent martyrs, 
 the preacher would have been torn to pieces. The one 
 caught the dagger which was thrown at him, and the other 
 assisted him to escape into St. Paul's school.J 
 
 Towards the end of Edward the Sixth's reign, Han- 
 cock had to consider with his friends a matter strikingly 
 in unison with the spirit of the time. 
 
 The wife of one Woocock of Poole gave out that there 
 was a voice which followed her which sounded these words 
 always in her ears : « He whom the King best trusts shall 
 deceive him, and work treason against him." After having 
 
 * It was declared lawful for the clergy to marry, 4th Nov. 1547. 
 t Viz. to draw his guts after him. 
 I J. Bruce, Esq., Archajologia. 
 
HANCOCK. — CONTENTIONS AT POOLE. 223 
 
 a good while continued to report this. Sir William Barkley, 
 who married the Lord Treasurer Winchester's daughter, 
 sent her up to London to the Council with two of his 
 eervants. She was not long there ; but returned with her 
 purse full of money, and without having made any commu- 
 nication to the Duke of Somerset, whom it seemed most to 
 concern, he being the person the king most trusted. 
 
 After her return the woman was more active than before 
 in circulating the report, and even went for that very 
 purpose to Wimborne. 
 
 Some persons of discernment thought the whole looked 
 like a plot against the Protector Somerset, and two merchants 
 of Poole begged Mr. Hancock to inform the Duke, then at 
 Sion, of the words. He complied with the request. The 
 Duke remarked, " Ah ! sirrah, this is strange." This con- 
 versation took place only three weeks before the Duke's 
 arrest. Strype believed Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, 
 to have been at the bottom of this plot. The Protector was 
 beheaded 22nd January, 1552. 
 
 When Mary ascended the throne, we may expect to learn 
 that the two parties in the church at Poole had violent 
 contentions. Some were for setting up an altar in the 
 church, while others opposed this. 
 
 Hancock read Queen Mary's proclamation, and interpreted 
 it to his parishioners. Whyte the merchant and his party 
 erected an altar, and procured a French chaplain, one Sir 
 Bryse, but the altar was pulled down. The rood or image 
 over the altar at Poole was brent, i. e. burned. In Devon- 
 shire some roods were sold for exportation to Spain and 
 Portugal, perhaps France, by thrifty churchwardens. 
 
 In 1538 the image of Walsingham, with those of Ipswich, 
 Worcester, Welsdon, and many others, were all brought 
 up to London, and burnt at Chelsea. 
 
 Whyte, who had an altar at his house, was threatened 
 with a hand-gun if the bell was rung out of the window, 
 so violent were the two parties. Hancock's opponents went 
 to church to try to catch him in some proscribed doctrine. 
 Some of his accounts of occurrences — for at such an era 
 
224 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 sermons contained historical and political matter as well as 
 doctrine — gave offence, and he was obliged to fly to 
 Normandy, whence he did not return for two years. It 
 was after his return that Mr. Thomas Hancock was pro- 
 cured to preach at Lyme. This favourite preacher, and, if 
 I may so style him, the Luther of the south-west of Eng- 
 land, was paid in 1582 the sum of 135. 4d. This sum was 
 doubtless for his journey and dinner, of which the principal 
 men partook. It was more than others had received. 
 Robert Davy, Mayor of Lyme, in 1569, charges for " a 
 precher that did preche here, 12d." Preachers received 
 at this time about 5s. 
 
 In the archives of Weymouth is an order dated 1653, 
 that two ordinaries be provided weekly at some public 
 house for the lecturers. 
 
 There are entries in the parish books of Minchinhampton 
 of many charges, with the prices affixed (Archseol., 
 J. Bruce, Esq.) : — 
 
 A. D. 1554. An Antiphonarium cost 
 
 A skin of leather to cover the volumes 
 A porthose - . . . 
 
 A rood - - . - . 
 
 A tabernacle - - . . 
 
 A Pyx 
 
 Wax, per lb. - 
 Glass, for a window, per foot - 
 A. D. 1560. A Bible, besides carriage 
 1561. A paraphrase of Erasmus 
 
 This was ordered by authority to be set 
 up for the instruction of the people in 
 the church. 
 1563. The second book of Homilies - - 3 6 
 
 1st tome of Homilies - - - 1 3 
 
 Oil was used with bread in baptism at 
 Minchinhampton in 1569. 
 1555. Making of the sepulchre - - 1 
 
 Watching the same - - - 1 
 
 Points, pins, and packthread - . o p 
 
 £ 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 20 
 
 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 
 
£ 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 35 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 2 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 CHARGES. — BOROUGH CONTESTS. 225 
 
 1556. A surplice . - - . 
 
 Making two small surplices 
 1558. Mending the best surplice 
 1568. A bundle of rushes for a marriage, in 
 1568, cost in London 
 Strawing herbs . . - 
 
 1615. Washing the surplice - . - 
 
 1620. Holland for the surplice and making 
 1592. Breaking up the church for an inter- 
 ment .... 
 1613. A weathercock - - - - 
 16^8. Pulpit cushion - - 
 t620. Bell metal, per cwt. - . - 
 1636. The book of canons . . - 
 
 1660. An hour glass - - 
 
 Charges were incurred in some parishes for ''mossing 
 the church;" we presume, strewing it with moss for the festive 
 season. 
 
 In a parish book at Broad Blunsdon, in North Wiltshire, 
 the sum of 3s. 6«?. for this purpose is entered in 1616 ; 19s. 6e?. 
 in 1633, and 4s. 6rf, to the same workman, a slater, for two 
 days and a quarter for himself and his boy " in gathering 
 moss for the church." In 1647 no less than 1/. 8s. was paid. 
 
 Hogling money was a customary payment made by the 
 sheep farmers for their hoglings or hoggets, that is, their 
 sheep of the second year. This payment was not continued, 
 writes Mr. John Bruce, after 1595. 
 
 When pews were constructed, about James the First's 
 reign, the green baize was found to harbour insects, which 
 gave rise to charges " for salting the fleas." Quarrels about 
 the occupancy and right to pews soon began. 
 
 The particular information available for an account of 
 the contests in our boroughs that took place a few years 
 after the Reformation, has been communicated in the few 
 foregoing pages. When all became Protestants, other 
 struggles ensued of a different kind. The Puritan con- 
 tended with his fellow churchman upon the lawfulness of 
 
 Q 
 
226 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES, 
 
 many matters in daily life. This subject is not intended to 
 be discussed at present. 
 
 Matters were not always in the church as they now are 
 in the day of its exaltation. Ministers and preachers were 
 distinct characters. The ordinary minister, beneficed or 
 not, was not allowed to take the higher office of preaching 
 without a license from the bishop of the diocese, that he 
 was " a sufficient or convenient preacher." Without a 
 license the minister was only allowed to read plainly and 
 aptly (without glossing or adding) the Homilies (49th 
 Canon). If beneficed, when the liying allowed it, he 
 had to procure, once a month, the services of a licensed 
 preacher (46th Canon). The people, not respecting the 
 " unpreaching ministers," as inferiors in ability, refused to 
 have their children baptized by them, or to receive the 
 sacrament at their hands. The 57th Canon threatens such 
 with excommunication, and ministers who baptized children 
 belonging to another parish with suspension. 
 
 The 54th Canon, sent forth a.d. 1603, menaced all 
 licensed ministers with loss of license if they did not 
 conform to the laws, ordinances, &c. of the church. So 
 soon as 1606, ministers had their licenses recalled for 
 the purpose of having new ones issued, which would be 
 withdrawn from those who were deemed to have been 
 imbued with Geneva doctrine. In Cornwall there was not 
 a single minister capable of preaching a sermon. 
 
 A plan has been proposed in this century for creating 
 an inferior order of clergy in the Church of England. A 
 review of the past will show us what their reception would 
 have been. Our ancestors craved " a learned ministry." 
 
 So far back as the beginning of the year 1641, com- 
 missioners were ordered by the House of Commons to visit 
 the various counties in England, and investigate certain 
 alleged abuses and innovations. Amongst other complaints 
 which reached the House was one of the refusal of many 
 iucumbents to preach a sermon themselves every Lord's 
 Day, or to admit another minister to their pulpits, although 
 the parishioners were willing to maintain him. A com- 
 
COMMITTEE. — OCCASIONAL PEEACHEKS. 227 
 
 mittee, called " The Committee of Preaching Ministers," 
 was appointed to send ministers where they were required, 
 and to provide for their maintenance.* 
 
 We have shown the earnest desire to hear sermons, and 
 how and at what cost a preacher was procured. The writer 
 has had an opportunity of witnessing, only some ten years 
 since, the effect produced by an occasional preacher. The 
 Abbe Guyon, a Missionaire sent out to preach in the 
 churches of Brittany and Normandy, held forth at Dinan, 
 and denounced dancing with such effect that only one 
 French lady could be found to subscribe to the season balls. 
 Had preaching been customary in the Eomish church, this 
 Abbe would surely have failed in his high-flown invectives. 
 The novelty and the fashion that attended the preacher in- 
 spired a. fureur that would have hailed a crusade. Fore- 
 warned of what awaited them at St. Malo, the lovers and 
 husbands raised an emeute so violent that the ruling powers 
 saved the Abbe by sending him off in disguise. 
 
 In Dec. 1614, Walter Yonge, Esq. records, in his Diary, 
 that the ministers of the diocese were called before the 
 Bishop of Exeter, who read letters from the Archbishop 
 directed to correct the besetting fault of the time — a running 
 after fine preachers. Every minister was to exhort his 
 parishioners to continue together on the Sabbath day, and 
 not to wander to other preachers who had better gifts than 
 their own pastors, but to content themselves with the word of 
 God read, and Homilies. 2. All to kneel at the receiving of 
 the sacrament. 3. To declare to their parishioners that it is 
 not necessary to have the word preached at the sacraments.f 
 
 We learn from the distrust in the mind of the admirer of 
 Mr. Thomas Hancock, as to his being able to restrain him- 
 self when excited in the midst of his sermon, that he preached 
 extempore. 
 
 There is much confused statement about this practice. 
 This preacher, doubtless, introduced much matter that was 
 
 * Somersetshire Sequestrations, a Paper by John Batten, Esq. : So- 
 merset Archaeol. Soc. 
 
 f Note to Yonge's Diary, p. 9. 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 never considered beforeliand, so that it was truly the off- 
 spring of the moment. 
 
 Sermons before the Reformation were uncommon, and 
 were, after that signal epoch, restrained in number by 
 authority, and the refusal of licenses to preachers. The 
 practice was to write out and learn the sermon, whether in 
 Latin or English, by memory, and then deliver it. Dr. 
 Westphaling preached before Queen Elizabeth at such an 
 unreasonable length, that her Majesty sent to him " to make 
 an end of his discourse without delay." Being called to 
 account for his presumption in having gone on half an hour 
 more, the divine excused himself by stating that he found it 
 impossible to omit any part in order to shorten it, lest he 
 should put himself so entirely out of cue that he should 
 forget the rest, and so be brought to shame before the 
 University and the Court.* Bishop Patrick's objection to 
 being made king's chaplain in 1671 was "the finding it very 
 difficult to get a sermon without a book." 
 
 The practice of reading sermons in the pulpit, without the 
 labour of having learnt them, which was thereby saved, ap- 
 peared 80 objectionable to Charles II., that the Duke of Mon- 
 mouth, as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, was 
 directed to interfere. It was designated as a " supine and 
 slothful way of preaching," that took beginniag with the dis- 
 orders of the late times. The names of those offenders who 
 should continue this practice, and wear their hair or perri- 
 wigs of unbecoming length, were to be signified to his 
 Majesty. 
 
 The impassioned addresses of Hancock and the long 
 sermons of Hugh Peters never were learnt by heart. They 
 preached too often, and the hour-glass was too often turned, 
 for this to have been the case. Peters, on one occasion, 
 told his hearers they were good feUows, and he would 
 " have one glass more " with them. 
 
 Communicants after the Reformation seem to have made 
 
 * Life of Duke of Monmouth, vol. i. 40. Miss A. Strickland's Life 
 of Queen Elizabeth, p. 271. 
 
FUNERAL SERMON. FEES. 229 
 
 an offertory donation only at Easter. From about the year 
 1604 the offertory money began to be collected at Minchin- 
 hampton on every occasion of receiving the Lord's Supper. 
 In the fifteenth century a scrivener made the churchwardens' 
 accounts in Latin, amusing as a witty story to a scholar. 
 
 Till the year 1635, the churchwardens of Minchinhampton 
 and others employed some persons to write and cast their 
 account. Transcripts of the parish register were generally 
 made by the schoolmaster. 
 
 A scrivener was employed likewise to make the " Book of 
 Vermin," those creatures which churchwardens paid persons 
 for having destroyed. " Foxehead, xijrf.," and in some parts 
 2d., is a frequent entry. Otter's head, xijd., a Gray's 
 head, i. e. a badger, xiiij<f. Many whoops' heads, i. e. 
 bullfinches, \s. 6d. 
 
 Churchwardens likewise provided "silk strings and 
 ribbands " for the poor children that had the king's evil. 
 
 A clergyman in the reign of Charles II. who supplied the 
 place of another for a Sunday received ten shillings. 
 
 The funeral sermon followed the decease of every person 
 in decent circumstances. Ten shillings was the sum paid to 
 the clergyman for writing and delivering it. An old story 
 is told of a widow who, inquiring what was the cost of a 
 funeral sermon, learnt that some were 10s. ; one at 7s. 6d. 
 -no one would know to be a funeral sermon, but there would 
 not be a dry eye in the church if the guinea one was preached. 
 
 The mournful discourse, prepared, if not newly composed 
 "for the rich friends who assembled to attend the parish 
 church the Sunday after a funeral, was deemed deserving of 
 a higher remuneration. Two guineas were paid for such a 
 performance. More than this amount was often laid out in 
 comfits at the funeral ; about a century and a half before a 
 priest had 6d. for singing mass at a burial. 
 
 Among the varied information the centenarian, Mrs. 
 Bartlett, lately gave at Exeter to a Poor Law Commis- 
 sioner, was the practice of her early days in that city to 
 beat the bounds, and fight with gads in the presence of the 
 clergy. The discontinuance of the fighting part of this 
 
 Q 3 
 
230 SOCIAL, HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 annual custom was a source of satisfaction to her. We see 
 how, when intercourse between counties was so limited, 
 practices continued which had been denounced centuries 
 before. Traces of ancient customs and religious rites may- 
 be discovered, when diligently ferreted out, which have 
 continued from the middle ages, just as ancient Catholic 
 rites were continued, on, somewhat modified from the heathen 
 age. The "beating the parish bounds," and the fighting 
 with gads by crowds, in which were the clergy up to the 
 lifetime of one now able to describe the scene ; the drink- 
 ing and Saturnalian festivity, conducted under the name 
 of a social duty, were the allowed remains, or Protestant 
 continuation, of the ancient Kogation Processions. In 
 some large parishes it took three days to beat the bounds.* 
 
 To the solemn service of Rogation, processions were early 
 added by the Western church. Though at first there was 
 no harm, many abuses followed in the train of parochial 
 perambulations. 
 
 In the Inquisitiones of the Archdeacon of Lincoln, a.d. 
 1223, it is inquired if there is sary fighting in the course of 
 the procession with the banner of the mother church, &c. 
 " 30. An alicubi leventur arietes, vel fiant scottali [compota- 
 tions] vel decertetur in prcBundo cum vexillo matricis ecclesiae.'" 
 
 How many spectators, and of those who so lately took 
 part in the scene, did not know how ancient a custom they 
 were perpetuating, f 
 
 Boys were humped, and put to considerable pain in the 
 operation, in order to impress a recollection of the locality 
 upon the memory — a faculty which, by the way, a quack 
 doctor undertook to recruit by means of a pill which he 
 vended for that purpose. A western esquire, named Drew, 
 of Wooton House, Dorset, tried the effect of kindness upon 
 the same mental faculty. When about to plant a number 
 of beech trees, he distributed currant buns to young chil- 
 dren. Eighty-five years after the scene was as vivid as 
 
 * Mr. E. Chadwick. 
 
 t See Dansey's Hora? Decanica; Ruralcs. 
 
MUSIC. — GJIEAT MEN. 231 
 
 any cruelty could have ensured. The aged saw in their 
 mind's eye each hedge row, the squire and madame, the 
 great basket loaded with buns, and those children who re- 
 joiced to partake of the treat. They remembered the taste 
 of the cakes. 
 
 Music in the Service of our Churches soon after the Reforma- 
 tion. — Choristers. — Organs, 8fc. 
 
 Having dwelt at length upon the feuds which the change 
 in religious opinions gave rise to, and the brawls that en- 
 sued — ■ a necessary consequence — in our parish churches, 
 let us now turn to the exercise of sweet harmony. Not 
 but that a great difference of opinion existed upon this 
 subject. 
 
 The "principal men" of Lyme, that is, the influential 
 members of the council soon after the Reformation, which 
 they espoused very warmly, directed much attention to the 
 service of the church, particularly to the vocal and instru- 
 mental part, besides that of preaching. 
 
 The Mayor of Lyme, John Hassard, in 1550-51, records 
 proofs of his care of the choristers by his entries : — 
 
 s. d. 
 Item, paid for iii yards and half of kersey to make hoses* 
 
 for iii laddys which singeth in church - - 5 10 
 
 Item, paid for ij pare of says for ij of them - 15 
 
 These were not, it appears, boys of the town : — 
 Item, delivered to tie lad that sang in the quire, when 
 
 he departed - - - - - -0 12 
 
 When William Tudbold was mayor in 1651 : — 
 Item more paid to John Abatt for dyeing of the boyes 
 
 cotts - - - - - -18 
 
 Item, more for making of them - - - 14 
 
 * The first pair of knit worsted stockings was seen by William Rider, 
 says Stow, near the foot of London Bridge in 1569, in the hands of an 
 Italian merchant. He borrowed them for a time, and caused others to 
 be made like them. The Earl of Pembroke wore the first in England. — 
 Weale's Quarterly Papers on Engineering, vol. v. 
 
 Q 4 
 
232 SOCIAL HISTOKY OP THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 Elchard Buckford, mayor, in 1562, made several entries, 
 testifying his care of those who assisted in giving solem- 
 nity to divine service : — 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Item, for a quayre of paper for that lad that singeth 
 
 in the quire - - - - - -03 
 
 Hoosecloth, do. - - - - - 2 6 
 
 Making of the hooses - - - - - 6 
 
 Pair of shoes for the said lad - - - - 7 
 
 Alex Davey in part payment of the lads hoard that singeth 
 
 in the quire* - - - - - -10 
 
 In 1569 Robert Davey entered : — 
 Paid to Hugh of Bristowe for playing in the church and 
 
 at my house - - - - - 1 5 
 
 Thus, vrhen a good performer travelled round the country, 
 he was engaged to add to the solemnity of the services of 
 the church. 
 
 There is nothing to show that the singing lads were in 
 Lyme church by compulsion. If any press-gang had laid 
 violent hands upon them, such treatment is not mentioned. 
 
 The famous Thomas Tusser, the younger son of a gen- 
 tleman, was destined by his father, from his having such a 
 good voice, to foUow music. He was sent to the collegiate 
 chapel of Wallingford to be instructed in choral singing. 
 The severity of the discipline made him in after years ex- 
 claim : — 
 
 " What touzed ears, like baited bears ! 
 What bobbed lips, what jerks, what nips ! 
 What bread how stale, what penny ale !" f 
 
 His singing powers being known, Tusser was literally 
 
 * The choristers at Winchester, in the time of Henry VIII., received 
 for their commons eightpence per week; those of Eton tenpence a 
 week. Cloth sufficient for a suit was allowed each at Christmas. 
 
 f More severity is used in Germany towards the learners of music 
 than of any other branch of instruction ; hence a saying, " he hates as a 
 youth hates Handel." 
 
CHORISTERS. — TUSSER. — ORGANS. 233 
 
 pressed for the choir of St. Paul's, which exercise of de- 
 spotic power he refers to in the following lines : — 
 
 " Then for my voice I must (no choice) 
 Away of force, like posting horse, 
 For sundry men had placards then 
 Such child to take." 
 
 "Writs or placards used to be issued, encouraging the 
 officers to whom they were directed to impress the male 
 children of poor persons in order to their being instructed 
 in music for public worship 
 
 Organs were not mute in all our country parish churches. 
 Much mention is to be found of them about the middle of 
 the sixteenth century. These were not the " great organ," 
 but " regals," or " a pair of organs,'' played upon the knees 
 of the performer, such as may be seen in a painting of St, 
 Cecilia. The virgin with rapturous look holds a double 
 organ, or pair of organs, in her lap, 
 
 " And whiles that the organs made melodie 
 To God alone thus in her harte sang she." 
 
 Regals are mentioned in the Roman de la Rose, written 
 about the year 1300. These were the single regals.* There 
 were two instruments, that is, two pair of organs at Poole, 
 when the famous Thomas Hancock was appointed to the 
 ministry of that town. The " horgons " were duly re- 
 paired at Minchinhampton in anticipation of the Easter ser- 
 vice. They were somewhat costly. A pair for St. Mi- 
 chael's Church, York, cost in 1536, 81. 
 
 One Robartt lived at Crewkerne about the time of the 
 Reformation, who was an " orgyn-maker," and let out organs 
 to churches by the year. He was paid by John Hassard, 
 Mayor of Lyme, in 1550-51, his year's rent, 11*. There 
 are many entries respecting the orgyn-makers coming " for 
 to see the orgyns," 2s. and 2s, 46?., and this for a journey of 
 fourteen miles, 
 
 * See Sir J. Hawkins's Hist, of Music, vol. ii. 448. Carter's Ancient 
 Sculpture, vol. ii. p. 12. 
 
234 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 There was an officer in the lists of the establishment of 
 the Eoyal Chapels, called " Tuner of the Begals." Queen 
 Elizabeth paid her tuner 10/. a year. Robartts' instrument 
 in Lyme Church was in the hands of an adept, whose ser- 
 vices were appreciated, as we may learn from the following 
 entry : — 
 
 " 1552. The mayor and his brethren grant to John Coke 51. 
 yearly, in consideration of the good service that he hath per- 
 formed in the church of King's Lyme from time to time, in sing- 
 ing and playing at organs, and which the said John Coke was to 
 continue during his life in the best manner he could, as God had 
 endued him to do." 
 
 How long Eobartt and Coke continued to exercise their 
 honest calling is not known. They promoted devotion tiU 
 opinions gained ground, which made to many their concord 
 worse than any discord could be. Their instruments, their 
 sounds of sweetest accent, were deemed unholy. 
 
 The protestation of the clergy of the Lower House, 
 within the province of Canterbury, contained these senti- 
 ments : — " That synging and saying of mass, matins, or 
 even song, is but roring, howling, whisteling, mummying, 
 conjuryng, and jogelyng, and the playing at the organys a 
 foolish vanity." 
 
 Great houses had their pair of organs. Those of Lord 
 De la Warr, of Offington House, near Worthing, were 
 valued at 3/. in 1554, but cost more when new. A pair 
 cost about the value of two good horses, or five working 
 oxen. 
 
 From the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth dates the 
 first singing of psalms after the Geneva fashion, that is, all 
 the congregation singing together. Psalm-singing such as 
 this, and heresy, were synonymous. The cathedral service 
 was held in abhorrence by many within and without the pale 
 of the Church. The Puritans allowed of the "people's 
 joining with one voice in a plain tune, but not of tossing the 
 psalms from one side to the other, with intermingling of 
 
CHUECH MUSIC. — OEOANS. 235 
 
 organs." * They desired to reform church music, which 
 they deemed to be not edifying, being so full of art ; but 
 they wished to leave a solemn music unmolested. 
 
 In respect of church music, both art and charity have been 
 dragged away by the humour of the time. 
 
 Bishop Copleston writes of the wisdom of the Reformed 
 Church, which, instead of rejecting this auxiliary, music, and 
 confining its province to the singing of psalms and hymns by 
 the whole congregation, as was the wish of the Puritans, and 
 as is the practice of nearly all the Reformed Churches of the 
 continent, has wisely retained both vocal and instrumental 
 music. 
 
 All organs were removed from churches by an ordinance 
 dated 1644. The earliest Dissenters felt called upon to 
 agitate at their provincial periodical meetings or convocations, 
 the difficult subject of instrumental music in private life. 
 At a Baptist convocation held at Bridgewater in 1655, the 
 question was proposed, " whether a beleeven man or woman, 
 being head of a family, in this day of the gospell, may keepe 
 in his or her house an instrument, or instruments of musicke, 
 playing on them, or admitting others to play thereon ? " 
 
 The answer was : " It is the duty of saints to abstaine from 
 all appearance of evil, and not to make pensioners for the 
 flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof, to redeem the time, and to do 
 all they do to the glory of God ; and though we cannot con- 
 clude the use of such instruments to be unlawful, yet we 
 desire the saints to be very cautious lest they transgress the 
 aforesaid rules in the use of it, and do which may not be of 
 good report, and so give ofience to their tender brethren." f 
 
 Oliver Cromwell, in 1656-7, prohibited all persons called 
 fiddlers or minstrels from playing, fiddling, or making music 
 in any inn, ale-house, or tavern, &c. If they proffered 
 themselves or offered to make music, they were to be adjudged 
 to be rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy vagabonds, and were to 
 be proceeded against as such. 
 
 * See Neal's Hist, of the Puritans. 
 
 t Church Book of the Baptist Chapel, Lyme Kegis. 
 
236 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOtTTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 William Taswell, A. M., rector of Wooton-under-Edge, 
 Gloucestershire, preached and published a sermon in 1742 
 upon "the Usefulness of Sacred Music," 1 Chron. vv. 16 to 42. 
 Many in that county doubtless entertained scruples. 
 
 Dissenters in the west of England generally retained their 
 great objection to instrumental music to this century. Now 
 organs are in general use ; and aU the female children of a 
 certain position in life learn the piano. 
 
 At a chapel in New England, United States, in 1799, it 
 was voted, amid much opposition, to procure a bass viol. 
 This was precisely a counterpart of what has occurred in 
 the dissenting places of worship in this country. Music has 
 triumphed. The pitch-pipe has yielded to musical instru- 
 ments and the organ. 
 
 So late as this century an aged member of an Independent 
 congregation refused a tenant for her house, a lady who kept 
 a school. She dreaded music and the possibility of " young 
 Herodiasses being brought up under her roof." 
 
 The last quarter of a century has seen the termination of 
 the grand and miscellaneous performances of a choir in our 
 parish churches provided with fiddle, clarionet, and every 
 kind, we may almost affirm, of musical instruments. The 
 Incumbents were hardly aware what a task they had taken in 
 hand when they meddled with these important personages. 
 They hardly succeeded in many parishes tiU the leaders had 
 died off. The " church singers," who played anthems, with 
 selections "from Handel, but mostly composed by them- 
 selves," had a position in their parish. They had an ad- 
 miring congregation. Their afternoon anthem was the 
 theme of conversation at the church hatch before the service, 
 and of inquiry and critical disquisition after. " And did 
 John," would one ask, " keep to his time ? " " Samuel was 
 crowding very fitly till his string broked." This was said 
 after a performance difficult in all the categories in which 
 difficulty — close up even to impossibility — may be found. 
 And there was, I was about to say, a finale, but it seemed 
 endless ; it was a concluding portion, and a long one, of the 
 anthem. Mary began an introductory recapitulation in 
 which she was ably followed of the words, the subject of the 
 
ORGANISTS. — JOHN COKE. 237 
 
 composition, the master-piece of one or of many, if the 
 choir lent a helping hand. It happened that Mary had to 
 manage three full syllables, and all the cadences, and trills, 
 and quavers connected therewith, as a solo. Then followed, 
 through all the turns of the same intricate piece, Thomas, of 
 tenor voice, who evolved his music, but did not advance to any 
 elucidation of the subject of his concluding eifort. He only 
 dwelt upon the same three syllables, at which the good minis- 
 ter was seen to smile and become restless, particularly when 
 Jonathan took on with deep bass voice, accompanied by the 
 tones he drew from his bass viol. He, as best suited a bass 
 singer, slowly repeated the syllables that Mary and Thomas 
 had produced in so many ways, and with such a series of 
 intonations. Our — great — Sal — . May some who 
 tittered at this canonization of, as it were, a female saint, be 
 forgiven. Had they waited a few minutes the grand union 
 of all the performers in loud chorus would have enlightened 
 them to the fact that the last syllable was only the first of 
 one of three ending in vation, which would be loudly re- 
 peated by the whole choir tiU they appeared fairly tired out. 
 
 One word more about John Coke the organ player. He 
 made himself useful to the mayor, when there were no Poors 
 Laws, in carrying out charitable objects. 
 
 In 1553 John Coke found (i.e. provided with all necessa- 
 ries) the poor children and the clerk.* 
 
 Many men in orders were at this unsettled period in indi- 
 gent circumstances. Some gave their time to practice 
 leechcrafi ; others were glad to earn a subsistence by other 
 means. This was the case with " Our Lady Clerk" at 
 Lyme, who had lived perhaps in comfort in " Our Lady 
 House" in Comb Street, and had been at the head of the 
 fraternity of our Lady of Mount Carmel, a religious house 
 elsewhere treated of. After the dissolution of religious 
 houses, Mr. John Tudbold, in 1545, employed him as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 " Item, more send to Mr. Wadham (of Catherston) by our Lady 
 
 * Town Accompt Book of Lyme. 
 
238 SOCIAL HISTOET OF THE SOUTHEKN COUNTIES. 
 
 Clarke, when that he did go to him to fet (fetch) a copy of the 
 seasing of our harness, a potell of sack, 6rf." 
 Item, more paid our Lady Clarke to go to Mr. Wadham's to 
 wryte a copy of the seasyng of our harnys for his labor and the 
 wryting of yt, Ad. 
 
 The ancestor of the present Earl Poulett employed a use- 
 ful emissary who was in orders. There was a sum of five- 
 pence paid in 1545 to " Master Polott's clarke," by the 
 Mayor of Lyme. 
 
 The Sabbath Day. — Punishments for Non- Observance of it 
 exhibited in Absence from Church, Sfc, and Profanation of 
 it in various Ways, Sfc. — Caps to he worn on Sundays, 8fc, 
 
 Ant consideration of the observance of the Sabbath day 
 in reference to our moral obligations to that generally, or to 
 any particular form of worship, is quite apart from the ob- 
 ject of these pages. The manner in which the Sabbath was, 
 or ought to be kept holy, falls under the decision of the 
 theologian. The antiquary furnishes matter for reflection 
 upon the past, by which, if wisely conducted, the present and 
 the future may be improved. Nothing can make us so con- 
 siderate towards our fellow men as to enlarge our views of 
 mankind by looking at the by-gone generations who lived 
 under a totally different state of society. If anything can 
 produce toleration in an individual mind, this will. 
 
 In the reigns of Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth muni- 
 cipal authorities were found, who began to move in enforcing, 
 by local enactments and penalties, the observance of the 
 Sabbath day. This holy day was desecrated in the West of 
 England in various ways. Those who agreed with the 
 Puritan party laboured to procure the making of orders, the 
 issuing precepts, and the settling of penalties against the 
 non-observance of the Sabbath. Hence in some measure the 
 contests in our country towns between the two parties, who 
 
SABBATH-BREAKING. — PENALTIES. 239 
 
 viewed this matter in so different a light. These were 
 violent and rancorous. 
 
 Some tradesmen, one might conclude, did not regard the 
 Sabbath at all. 
 
 So early as about the year 1550, the juries in the Admi- 
 ralty Court of Poole had their attention called to this sub- 
 ject. They were by an entry bidden to their duty in these 
 words :— 
 
 " Also you shall inquyere if any use to fyshe the Sundayes 
 or suffer any engynnes to lye in the sea the Sundayes to take 
 fish withaU." 
 
 In the Custom Book of Brighton, 1580, a penalty was 
 fixed for any one who should drive for herrings on any Satur- 
 day night or Sunday till evening prayer be done. 
 
 Shameless, open desecration of the house of God was 
 visited with punishment soon after the Reformation. 
 
 A shoemaker and merchant of Yarmouth were fined 2s. 
 each for merchandizing, bargaining, and selling a last of 
 white herrings in the church in the time of divine service, 
 November 2.* 
 
 In 1581 an order was made at Lyme to this effect : — 
 
 Item, that no tuckers do sig or wash any cloths upon the Sab- 
 bath-day upon pain of 3s. 4rf. 
 
 Item, that no artificers do open their shop windows [and in 
 another order] nor labour upon the Sabbath-day, upon pain of 
 &s. Ad. 
 
 The individuals who were carrying out their religious 
 views in 1581, did not excuse even those who were exercis- 
 ing with the bow. 
 
 Some persons were presented " for practicing at the butts 
 on the Sabbath day, as being contrary to a statute." On a 
 file of presentments the label is this : " Artillery (i.e. prac- 
 ticed with bow and arrow) for Sundays." 
 
 In the next reign the rulers at Exeter laid a fine of 3s. M. 
 upon every person who was polled, barbed, and trimmed on 
 the Sabbath. 
 
 * History of Norfolk. 
 
240 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES, 
 
 These precepts and orders had, it Is probable, to experience 
 the opposition of the majority. Lyme was torn In the early 
 years of James I. by religious feuds respecting "pro- 
 fane abuses." In 1610 the jury presented the constables 
 " for suffering unlawful games to be played at Beaufront (a 
 locality at Lyme so called where a great feast was held), as 
 well the Sabbath day as the week days." This was doubt- 
 less the proceeding of the party that seconded the former 
 vicar, whose license had been withdrawn, against those who 
 strove to perpetuate the celebration of a noted local festivity. 
 
 There were presentments made at Castle Combe in 1611, 
 an epoch remarkable for activity in such matters, — of those 
 who were habitual card-players and players of shrift groat 
 on Sundays.* 
 
 The Protestants of Poole were very zealous under their 
 famous minister, Mr. Thomas Hancock. In a letter from 
 the Mayor of Poole and three others the feeling respecting 
 the observance of the Sabbath day and the religion of their 
 neighbours Is strikingly displayed. The writers of this 
 letter to Sir Francis Ashley, the vice-admiral of Dorset, 
 dated 4th February, 1586-7, speak of James Mounsey of 
 London, the farmer of the mines of Brownsea, as one whose 
 religion they doubted, for they had not seen him at church 
 since he had been there. He was probably a Romanist or 
 an Infidel. They add, " He hath a brother a very bad fel- 
 low, and of an odious religion, who serveth the Brownsea 
 mines under him. He persuadeth the workmen there to 
 labour the Sabbath day, and to rest the Saturday, which he 
 salth is the Sunday." f 
 
 Dissent was unknown. All the population, except those 
 of the old form of religion, had the parish church for 
 worship. The terrors of the law, and of bye-laws in 
 boroughs, were directed entirely to correct and punish those 
 who neglected attendance at divine worship from Indifference, 
 Idleness, or a want of religious principle within them. It 
 
 * Scrope's History of Castle Combe, 
 t Sydenham's History of Poole, 386. 
 
SABBATH-BREAKING. — PENALTIES. 241 
 
 was not, as in after years, in Charles the Second's reign, 
 to persecute a party who espoused another form of worship. 
 Absence from divine worship, and that alone, caused parties 
 to be the object of presentments and of fines. 
 
 Jane Scrope, a member of that ancient family, was pre- 
 sented at the Manorial Court of Castle Combe, in 1596, for 
 not having been at any church. 
 
 In 1597, the jury at the court in Lyme presented that 
 John Crandley and Henry Davy do not keep their church 
 at the time of divine service, and are therefore amerced 
 I2d. each. 
 
 Several others were presented, in 1599, "for having been 
 absent from God's divine service for six Sundays, at I2d. 
 each time." — Again, " absent eight Sundays, eight shillings 
 each." 
 
 At Castle Combe, in 1594, an order was made that all 
 butchers should shut their shop windows before the chiming 
 of the second bell for morning prayers, under the pain 
 of vs. 
 
 At Lyme, in 1599, beer was not to be sold during the 
 time of divine service. 
 
 Three persons were presented at Weymouth, in 1623, as 
 having been at Sandsfoot Castle, therefore absent from even- 
 ing service, and fined xiirf. each. 
 
 Archbishop Arundel endeavoured to put down the hold- 
 ing of fairs in churchyards on Sundays ; in a word, keeping 
 the ancient wakes there. Barber surgeons were not to 
 keep open their shops on that day. 
 
 As enjoined by King James's Book of Sports, published 
 in the sixteenth year of his reign, a.d. 1618, the people (at 
 least those who did not abstain from going to church, and 
 had attended the service) after divine service might indulge 
 in lawful recreation, such as dancing, archery, leaping, 
 vaulting, or any other such harmless recreation. May games, 
 Whitsun ales, morris-dances, and May-poles, and other 
 sports therewith used, so as the same be had in due and 
 convenient time, without impediment or neglect of divine 
 service. The unlawful games for Sundays were bear- and 
 
 R 
 
242 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 bull-baitings, interludes, and, at all times in the meaner 
 sort of people by law prohibited, bowling. Plays were 
 acted in the first regular theatre only on Sundays. 
 
 The king feared the deterioration of the people for want 
 of warlike exercises, and from an opinion that no honest 
 mirth or recreation is lawful or tolerable in the Protestant 
 religion. 
 
 The west of England was, generally speaking, shocked 
 at the pubHcation of the " Book of Sports." 
 
 Ignatius Jordan, a native of Lyme, who had become a 
 great merchant of Exeter, petitioned King James through 
 the bishop for the observance of the Lord's Day. This 
 interference drew forth the anger of the king, who declared 
 he would hang the fellow. 
 
 A writer*, referring to a record of proceedings at the 
 Dorset County Sessions, and one of proceedings before the 
 magistrates of the borough of Dorchester, from 1654 to 
 1661, sensibly remarks, "that sources of this description 
 for illustrating the social peculiarities of other times have not 
 met with that attention they merit. The municipal archives 
 of the kingdom — those obscure and mouldering hoards of 
 tawny paper and yeUow parchment concealed in the chests 
 of the various incorporated towns — comprise very extensive 
 and copious stores for ascertaining and illustrating the state 
 of society at different periods, and the transitions of popular 
 habits and customs. The relative manners and ordinary 
 occupations of the community, the peculiarities that dis- 
 tinguish particular times, the influence of national events 
 upon social manners and upon local practices, — all these 
 things are here developed and faithfully pictured, together 
 with much matter of an individual and personal character." 
 
 These sources are much more fertile in this respect than 
 might at first sight be supposed ; and the casual and in- 
 cidental notices in which these social lineaments are pour- 
 trayed are the more interesting and important, because 
 
 * Mr. Hearn's MS. Book of Proceedings before the Magistrates of 
 Dorchester. 
 
NON-OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH. 243 
 
 they may be relied upon as apart from all historical par- 
 tisanship or social theory. 
 
 In the examination of such records we become better 
 acquainted with the habits, the manners, the daily occu- 
 pations, and the social and personal peculiarities of our 
 predecessors. 
 
 These proceedings before the Dorchester justices teem, 
 during the earlier portion, with indications of the fanatic 
 spirit which prevailed in those times, and which appears, 
 in our criminal courts, to have been particularly developed 
 in attempts to enforce the extreme observance of the 
 Sabbath, in the punishment of swearing and the use of other 
 intemperate language, and in severe visitations for tippling 
 and any indulgence in mirthful propensities. Entries for 
 offences under these heads are numberless : a few may be 
 cited. Thus, for the general neglect of divine worship, 
 under date of Jan. 22rd, 1656, it is entered that 
 
 " PhiUip Hulett was questioned for misdemenors as for 
 neglectinge to heare the word on the Lords daye divers 
 times," &c. He was leniently dealt with for the nonce, 
 being discharged, but with a menace that " upon the next 
 complaynt he is ordered to bee sent to Bridwell to bee put 
 to worke." 
 
 Again, " Ffebruary 7th, 1658. — Samuel Cole, being 
 convicted for absenting himselfe from the publique ordi- 
 nances vpon the sabboth day, was demanded 2s. 6d. for his 
 default, and for want of money was sett by the heeles." 
 
 " 9th ditto. Katherine Bartlett, widow, vpon her owne 
 confession did absent herselfe from Church the last Lord's 
 day, contrary to the Law, in the morniag ; was ordered to 
 pay 2s. 6d., and in default of paying shee was ordered to be 
 sett in stocks." 
 
 Five days after, viz. Feb. 14., it is noted that 
 
 "John Samwayes, by his own confession, hath not bin 
 at Church these five weekes, and having not monny to satisfy 
 the law, was ordered to be stocked for his sayd offence." 
 And Jan. 17th, 1658, three delinquents at once "paid 
 
 R 2 
 
244 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 halfe a crowne apiece for neglecting to come to the publike 
 worship yesterday in the afternoon." 
 
 Travelling on the Sunday, and other breaches of the Sab- 
 bath, were visited with severity. 
 
 On the 1st of April, 1657, proceedings are taken against 
 Thomas Pouncye, on the charge that he " did travaile upon 
 the Lord's day a horseback towards Charmister in ye after- 
 noone." And on the same day information is laid against 
 Robert Fooks for " riding in the cross lanes above Broad- 
 close towards Charmister, and soe towards Som'ton, as hee 
 (the informant) thinks." So strict was the surveillance in 
 this respect, that one unfortunate wight is proceeded against 
 for " travailing vpon the Lord's day at three of the clock in 
 morning, who was taken by the watch." 
 
 Even a rural stroll in the neighbourhood on a summer 
 Sunday evening was deserving of condign punishment in the 
 eyes of the sturdy Puritans of the time. On the 9th of July, 
 1655, informations were laid against no fewer than ten in- 
 dividuals for walking abroad on the Sabbath, including 
 " Thomas Standish and his wife, for walking in Frome Lane 
 in sermon time." On another occasion a pair of " swete- 
 hartes " were convicted of a similar offence ; a course of 
 proceeding that would be provocative of a rebellion in the 
 present times. On another day an unhappy lad is " ordered 
 to be whipt by his master " for riding on a gate at West 
 Mills on a Sunday afternoon. Whipping and stocking ap- 
 pear to be the punishments more frequently awarded for this 
 description of offence. The following entry is curious, as 
 showing a mode of recreation prevalent at the time, and 
 the cost of such an entertainment : — 
 
 "May 19. 1656. — Mathew Traske being quested for 
 goeing to Charmester esterdaye, being the Lords daye, sath 
 that hee ded goe to Charmester emedyately after dener, and 
 came home agayne a letell after the sermon wase done at 
 trentie, it beinge the parish in which hee leveth. Further 
 hee saith that there went with him Edward White, Josef 
 Foye, Mary Foye, Thomas James, Edward Wingate, George 
 Toogood ; and further hee saith that Josef Foye, Mary Foye, 
 
NON-OBSEEVANCE OF THE SABBATH. 246 
 
 and Josefe Foy's sweteharte eate milke and creme in a 
 rome by themselves ; and the said Traske, "White, James, 
 Wingate, and Toogood eate milcke and creme in another 
 rome by themselves, and further saith that they spente there 
 2c?. a pece in melcke and creme." The record goes on to 
 state that " this examt. was stockt 3 owers for said oiFence." 
 
 There are many instances of parties going from parish to 
 parish to hear sermons as in these more advanced times, 
 when it is made a matter of fashion to " sit under " some 
 popular preacher. A remarkable change, however, has 
 taken place in this respect. At the present time the prac- 
 tice is observed by the more Puritanical professors ; whilst, 
 at the period treated of, it was the looser members of the 
 community who were addicted to this impropriety, seeking, 
 under colour of attending a place of worship, opportunities 
 for gossiping and holiday keeping ; inducements, perhaps, 
 not altogether uninfluential with those who are now so prone 
 to stray from their own parishes on Sundays. On the 13th 
 of June, 1655, Thomas Hopkins and Richard Hopkins are 
 fined Is. each for going to Stinsford Church on the afternoon 
 of the preceding Sunday. On the 5th of May, 
 
 " Charles Gardner confesseth that he traveled vpon Sa- 
 both day the 27th of April, 1656, to Fossen (Forston), as he 
 pretends, to heare a sermon, and is convickted to pay 10s." 
 
 May 19, in the same year, Thomas James was put in the 
 stocks three hours for attending to hear Mr. Bartlett preach 
 in Charminster Church. How would the sermon-hunters of 
 the present day approve of this practice of " setting by the 
 heeles"? 
 
 The laws against trading on the Lord's Day were also en- 
 forced with like severity. In addition to proceedings against 
 butchers, bakers, and chandlers, for supplying provisions on 
 Sunday, is the following record of a somewhat extreme 
 case : — 
 
 " January 11, 1655-6. — The information of Andrew 
 Hobbs vppon oath, who saith that on Saboth day the 30th 
 of December, at two of the clocke in the morninge, Richard 
 Abbott was at worke in his shopp at bis trade of a taylor ; 
 
246 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 and beinge told by this examt. it was time to leve of, beinge 
 the Saboth daye in the morninge, the said Abbott notwith- 
 standing continued in his work, and this examt. cominge to 
 him againe a quarter of an ower after, founde him still at 
 worke." 
 
 On the 28th of the same month Charity James was fined 
 five shillings for carrying coals and stones to his kiln on the 
 Sabbath. 
 
 Tippling on the Sunday was also severely punished. On 
 the 23rd of July, 1655, Nicholas Day, Thomas Churchill, 
 John Pride, Leonard Gawler, John Reynolds, and Hugh 
 Eastmond, were severally fined 10s., a penalty of consider- 
 able amount in those times, being equal to at least 40*. at 
 the present day. 
 
 Children also are convicted of playing at juvenile amuse- 
 ments on the same day. Amongst the games mentioned, 
 are " spur point," and " nine stones." The first of these is 
 probably the same as " blow point," an ancient childish game 
 of which a few incidental notices are to be found, but no 
 description that I am aware of. Marmion in his Antiquity, 
 4to., 1641, Act 1., says, "I have heard of a nobleman that 
 has been drunk with a tinker, and of a magnifico that has 
 plaid at blow point." And in the comedy of Lingua, 1617, 
 Act 3. so. 2., Oramnestes introduces Memory as telling " how 
 he plaid at blow point with Jupiter when he was in his side 
 coats." The " nine stones " mentioned is, doubtless, the sport 
 of " niae men's morris," or " merrUs," which was played on 
 a sort of chessboard cut in the ground, and nine small stones 
 for each player. It was very similar to the " tit-tat-to " 
 played by schoolboys on their slates at the present day. 
 Frequent references to " nine men's morris " occur in ancient 
 writers. 
 
 Proceedings were also taken on several occasions against 
 women for hanging out clothes to dry on the Sunday, the 
 general fine for which offence appears to have been 5s." 
 
 The churchwardens received the conviction money for 
 having profaned the Lord's Day, which they gave away in 
 small sums to the suffering poor. 
 
INVENTION OF HATS AND CAPS. 247 
 
 In 1682 the churchwardens of Lyme were presented for 
 not giving an account of those that absent themselves from 
 divine service. The juries did this office for the church- 
 wardens in some future presentments, whether it was that 
 the churchwardens were remiss, or that the juries were in- 
 flamed against dissent. This is set apart from other matter, 
 because the fine was imposed to punish the following a ■par- 
 ticular form of religious worship, and not for total neglect of 
 public religious ordinances altogether. 
 
 How the Legislature caused the sabbath day to be often 
 mentioned in respect of caps and hats may prove interesting. 
 
 Hats and felts were invented in France in the year 1449, 
 in the reign of Charles VII., and were, like other novelties 
 (though fashion was here not the only recommendation), in- 
 troduced into England, and were approved of by our coun- 
 trymen. 
 
 Caps, if personified, may be said to have long won the 
 day in the contest with all competitors for the favour of 
 the Legislature. Hats, bonnets, and caps were considered to 
 be faithfully made when they were wrought, fulled, and 
 thicked by men's strength, that is, with hands and feet. 
 Alaa ! about 1482 they began to be fulled and thicked in 
 fulling mills. An Act prohibited this, which was revived in 
 1552. In the year 1566, it was enacted that no foreign 
 material was to be used in the making caps. 
 
 Though in 1512 no wrought caps or hats of felt were 
 allowed to be imported, in 1530 a change ensued, and out- 
 landish or felt hats were then admitted. 
 
 Hats in the reign of Elizabeth began to be made of various 
 substances. Stubbes, greatly shocked, no doubt, at the new 
 vanity, writes that some were made of silk, some of velvet, 
 some of tafietie, some of sarcenet, some of wool, and which is 
 more curious, some of a certain kind of fine haire ; these 
 they call heoer hattes of xx., xxx,, or xl. shillings price ! ! 
 
 Hats became fashionable ; and the cappers, or makers 
 of caps, worn before the introduction of hats, suffered ac- 
 cordingly in their trade. 
 
 These matters were not allowed in the reign of Queen 
 
 R 4 
 
248 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEKN COUNTIES. 
 
 Elizabeth to find their level ; nor was a man, either old or 
 young, able to decide upon what was best for his health, or 
 most becoming for his person, without meeting with some 
 interference. A great contest would have to be settled, not 
 according to its merits, but as either of the parties succeeded 
 in obtaining the more powerful court favour. 
 
 The cappers of England won the field in the year 1571 
 (13 Eliz. c. 19.), and procured a statute to be passed in 
 favour of those who " used the art of making woollen caps." 
 It was enacted that every person above the age of six years 
 (except maidens, ladies, peers, &c.) should wear upon the 
 sabbath and holy days upon their head one capp of woU knyt, 
 thicket], and dressed in England by some of the trade of 
 cappers, under the penalty of 3s. 4rf. per day. One half of 
 this fine was to go to the mayor or justice, the other half to 
 the poor. 
 
 At a Court Leet at Lyme in 1578, and a Court of 
 Hustings the same year, it was directed, " that Mr. Mayor 
 do appoint a surveyor to take notice and present such as 
 wear hats and no caps upon the sabbath day or holy days, 
 according to the statute, upon pain of 10s." A presentment 
 was accordingly made of many offenders at 3s. M. each, 
 styled offensores contra statut' p piliis. John Gosse, jun., a 
 name connected with the last display of bow and arrows and 
 the post, was among the number fined. The Act was repealed 
 by 39 Eliz. 
 
 Lest there might be any one thing over which civic 
 authorities did not impose some law or some restriction as it 
 might be supposed, we find women's dress engaging the 
 attention of the chief magistrate of a city. 
 
 The Mayor of Chester, Henry Gee, in order to distinguish 
 between married and unmarried women, ordered that no un- 
 married women should wear white or other coloured caps, 
 and no woman to wear any hat unless she rides or goes 
 abroad into the country (except sick or aged persons) on 
 pain of 3s. 47. * 
 
 * Lvson's Cheshire. 
 
ORDER OF VESTRY. — BADGES. — ACTIONS. 249 
 
 All recipients of relief at Eastbourne, in 1674, were com- 
 pelled by the vestry to wear a badge upon the right side of 
 their upper garment. 
 
 Are we to believe that these personal restrictions were 
 punctually obeyed? Could the authorities enforce such 
 matters ? 
 
 At Birmingham, about the year 1775, the vestry passed 
 an order that each person receiving relief should wear a 
 badge. A number of these were cast for the purpose. The 
 day arrived. An old woman, the first, was brought before 
 the board, who told her what the order was, and gave her her 
 badge of disgrace. She courtesied, and expressed her readi- 
 ness to do as they commanded without delay. Pulling up 
 her gown, she pinned it on her petticoat ; then, letting fall 
 her gown, the badge was invisible, and thus the plan was 
 frustrated, to the great annoyance of the parish law makers. 
 
 The companies, guilds, or brotherhoods of tradesmen in 
 France were antagonistic like the cappers and hatters, and 
 engaged in ceaseless and acrimonious disputes with each other 
 as to the precise limits of their respective functions. To de- 
 termine these knotty questions, the tavern-keepers went to 
 law with the bakers, and the fruiterers with the grocers ; and 
 a protracted contest before courts was necessary to determine 
 the precise point at which the appropriate office of the shoe- 
 maker gave place to that of the cobbler. The tailors com- 
 menced, in 1530, an action against the old-clothes-men, 
 which expired in the year 1776, in the 246th year of its age. 
 And thus also, in the year 1509, the poulterers commenced a 
 suit against the rotisseurs, to determine whether, within 
 their privilege of selling rotis, the defendants were entitled 
 to sell roasted game and poultry. The Palais de Justice 
 decided, in 1628, that is, in the 120th year of the discussion, 
 that no rotisseur might supply the meat required at any 
 marriage or other festival, unless it were celebrated under 
 his own roof, but that within those domestic precincts he 
 might sell to any customer " trois plats de viande bouillie, et 
 trois de fricassee.* 
 
 ' Sir J. Stephen's Lectures on the History of France, vol ii. p 375. 
 
250 SOCIAL HISTOEY OF THE SOUTHERN COUKTIES. 
 
 Collection of Money made for Geneva. 
 
 The interest felt in every thing relating to Geneva, on the 
 part of our western countrymen and townsmen for many 
 years, was very deep. The first collection for Geneva in 
 1582 took place in consequence of a letter from the bishop 
 who had received a letter from the Council recommending 
 it to be made for that foreign city. Geneva had suffered, 
 29 Jan. 1582, from an attack of the young Duke of Savoy, 
 instigated, as the Council asserted, by the Pope. 
 
 Eighteen persons of Lyme subscribed 3/. 3s. 6d. Each 
 gave not less than Is., not more than 10s. Mr. Simon Nor- 
 rington, minister of the parish, received for the Chancellor 
 of Dorset; and the second collection, amountingto IZ. 10s. \0d., 
 was paid to Sir John Horsey, Kt., and George Trench- 
 ard, Esq., by virtue of their precept to the mayor.* 
 
 Fish Diet, Licenses to eat Meat in Lent, 8fc. 
 
 Our legislators in Tudor reigns contrived many of what 
 we may term Politic Laws, and the correction of a particular 
 evil was aimed at by a somewhat tortuous process, and one 
 liable to be greatly misinterpreted. 
 
 Though the population of England was so small in the 
 16th century by comparison with that of the present census, 
 still the produce of the land was also very inconsiderable, 
 and the ruling powers became anxious to secure a supply of 
 food. The " preserving the navy," which meant the fisher- 
 men and seafaring men of this country, by keeping these in 
 full employment so that they might be ready upon an emer- 
 gency to serve the State, was likewise an object that began 
 to be considered with attention, owing to the posture of Con- 
 tinental affairs. 
 
 * See List in the Archives. 
 
ENACTMENTS. — MUNICIPAL OEDEES. 251 
 
 Our present Parliament would address themselves, if re- 
 quired, directly to the object aimed at, " Feeding the popu- 
 lation," and " Encouraging fishermen and the breeding up of 
 seafaring men." The process did not use to be so simple. 
 
 In the early part of Queen Elizabeth's reign a marked 
 desire was displayed for the encouragement of the fisheries, 
 as Strype records, and the great question of the expediency 
 of a more extensive fish diet was settled by the higher 
 powers. Thereupon, in 1564, legislation for that purpose 
 commenced ; and though the Protestant form of religion had 
 been fully re-established, the ancient Fish Days were re- 
 stored, and that compulsorily. 
 
 These were defined to be every Friday, Saturday, Ember- 
 ing days, other days called Vigils, the days of Lent or any 
 other days, conunonly repealed fish days ; but Wednesdays 
 were added in an Act passed this year at the instigation of 
 Cecil, who was a great promoter of this line of policy. 
 
 As may readily be expected, warm partisans of the dis- 
 carded religion rejoiced in this turn of aifairs, and ascribed 
 the enactments and proclamations to a sounder view of man's 
 obligations which the Reformation had interfered with. The 
 Protestants viewed the return to fish days with dislike, as 
 tending to Popery. The Queen's ministers clearly saw how 
 these opinions, turning upon religion only, would interfere 
 with their method of securing the object aimed at, so it was 
 declared that " those who said the eating of fish and abstain- 
 ing from meat was of any necessity for the saving of the soul 
 of man, such persons were to be punished as the spreaders 
 of false news." 
 
 Notwithstanding this rousing religious partisanship by a 
 particular policy, a result that would seem to have been in- 
 evitable from the peculiar position of civil and religious affairs, 
 the plans were persevered in. 
 
 First came the State enactments ; then in due course fol- 
 lowed the municipal orders throughout the country about 
 killing and eating flesh. 
 
 Persons eating meat on fish days were to pay for the first 
 
252 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 oflFence lOs., for a second offence 20*., and to suffer imprison- 
 ment. The fine was before the end of the reign so high as 31. 
 
 Various causes had operated in Tudor reigns, as of late 
 years, to favour or depress the trade of fishing. This occu- 
 pation is not exempt from the fluctuations of wages, prices, 
 local advantages, and improvements or ruin of works that 
 render our harbours accessible, or work their final decline. 
 When we read in local histories of the rise or decline of 
 fishing, we must not conclude too hastily that fish were not 
 to be taken, or that fishermen had given up that occu- 
 pation. Thus we read that the Vicar of Eastbourne received, 
 for tithes of fish, 20?. ; but that in 1603 these produced but 
 20s. A more favourable locality perhaps very near, or many 
 other circumstances, may have caused the fishermen of East- 
 bourne to remove. Just as in the present war, there are no 
 fishermen to be found for the usual number of fishiag-boats 
 and vessels in the' "West of England. Great numbers left 
 the occupation for the merchant service at seaports, where the 
 wages were 3/. 10s. a month. When the Allies have made 
 peace, men in numbers will return to fishing ; but there is 
 fear, should the war continue long, that the marks for choosing 
 the good ground and avoiding the rough or rocky ground 
 will not be perpetuated. Boys from the Union Houses 
 might be sent fishing, and instructed by those fishermen who 
 still continue trawling. 
 
 Abstinence, as is set forth in a proclamation, occasioned 
 the saving and increase of flesh. The two Universities and 
 Winchester were exempted from the observance of this Act, 
 by which the food of the country was to be eked out. The 
 people at large looked on with great ill humour, owing to 
 these exemptions, and their " being much addicted to flesh- 
 meats." Some feigned excuses, pretending that the pro- 
 clamations were issued so near Lent that they could not 
 make a convenient provision of fish ; " others undutifully 
 pretended that they ought not to be restrained of their 
 liberty." These were not listened to : they could not be 
 allowed to eat what they liked, and so disappoint "the 
 great benefit that wise men apprehended to be by spreading 
 
ABSTINENCE DURING LENT. 253 
 
 much fish in the realm." * If butchers killed no meat in 
 Lent, then fishermen, it was asserted, would go to sea with 
 better encouragement. The confounding Lent with other 
 seasons was called by Elizabeth's successor " an evil, an 
 enemy to the plenty of our kingdom." f Strype tells us 
 that Queen Elizabeth's subjects were very unwilling to 
 comply, and exhibited " a licentious and carnal disorder." 
 
 In the archives of Weymouth, a.d. 1568-9, is an entry : 
 — " Paid horse-hire to go to Dorchester to sett the procla- 
 mation for the eating of flesh, \id."X 
 
 The books of corporations contain many casual scraps of 
 information about the time when the law in this particular 
 was enforced. 
 
 No flesh was to be kUled in Lent ; none was to be dressed 
 by any innkeeper. Privy search was to be made in order 
 to discover if this was done. Licenses were to be granted 
 for the eating flesh to certain persons in a certain state of 
 health. All these persons who had a license to eat flesh 
 were to notify the same to the alderman. 
 
 We read of the Queen's almoner sending to the Mayor 
 of Leicester, in 1589, for the fines and forfeitures of per- 
 sons for kiUing and eating flesh in Lent, to be disposed of 
 by him as Queen's alms.§ 
 
 Kecognizances were taken for brewers, tiplers, and for 
 abstinence from flesh during Lent, and other times, in " the 
 use of those things which were prohibited, and are to serve 
 for a supply for the whole year following." 
 
 Persons had begun to make special choice of Friday 
 nights for suppers and entertainments in the reign of James 
 I., and of the fish days for riot and excess. Innholders 
 were not to dress any supper on Friday nights, either in 
 Lent or out of Lent. 
 
 An office for granting licenses to eat flesh in any part of 
 
 * Proclamation. 
 
 f Fry's Complete Treatise on Artificial Fish Breeding. 
 
 I Sherren Papers. 
 
 § Nichol's Leicester. 
 
254 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 England was opened in St. Paul's Churchyard, and adver- 
 tised in the public papers so late as 1663.* 
 
 The law required that parties, who supplied persons 
 who had procured a license to eat flesh, or the shipping, 
 should themselves be licensed. 
 
 Nicholas Hunt was licensed at Weymouth, 1607, to kill 
 flesh within the town in the time of Lent, and to utter and 
 sell the same, either beef or pork, only to those who were 
 licensed to eat flesh during Lent, or for provision of ship- 
 ping to the seas, according to the laws and statutes of the 
 reahn. This butcher entered into recognizances with two 
 sureties of 100 shillings each.f 
 
 The form of a license to eat meat, granted on the eve of 
 the Restoration by the Puritan minister of Colyton, was 
 entered by him in the book of burials for that parish : — 
 
 " Having been certified by two approved physicians of the 
 necessity of Sir John Yonge's eating flesh, upon which, having 
 granted him a former licence (so far as in me was), the same 
 distemper stUl continuing, as is certified by one of the said phy- 
 sicians, and Sir John Tonge's having the same, I do (as much as 
 in me is) give the said Sir John Tonge licence to eat flesh during 
 the said necessity. In witness whereof, I have subscribed my 
 name the 9th of March, 1660. 
 
 " Jno. Wilkins, Vicar. 
 
 " John, younger son of John Wilkins, one of 
 the churchwardens." J 
 
 The operation of laws can but be learned by local entries, 
 of which a few are here selected. 
 
 In St. GUes's, London, are parish entries of fines for 
 those who had offended. 
 
 A.D. 1646. Mr. Hooker paid a fine of 2*. 6d. for having 
 brewed on a fast day. 
 
 Fair-men travelling on a fast day were fined Is. 
 
 1652. Mx. Huxley and Mr. Morris, who were riding out 
 of town during sermon time on a fast day, 1 Is. 
 
 After the Restoration in 1663, at a meeting of the corpo- 
 
 * Wilson's Life of Defoe. ■(• Sherren Papers. 
 
 J See the Yonge Diary, Camden Soc, ed. by George Roberts. 
 
SCARCITY OF FISH. 255 
 
 ration of Weymouth, It was ordered that John Eborne, 
 George Parry, &c. were not to dress, sell, or utter any 
 flesh during the time of the present Lent. 
 
 When the desire of the " wise men " to extend the fish 
 diet began to be carried into eifeot, fish was considered to 
 be very dear. 
 
 In 1563, green or fresh herrings were so scarce, that at 
 Yarmouth, the great mart, they sold at an unusually high 
 rate. 
 
 
 £ 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 In 1563, a last, i. e. 80 bushels, sold for 
 
 - 9 
 
 
 
 
 
 1569, „ ,, 
 
 - 8 
 
 
 
 
 
 (the same price as a ton of lime.) 
 
 
 
 
 1586, wet fish (cod) per cwt. 
 
 - 
 
 16 
 
 
 
 dry fish „ - - 
 
 - 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 1611, a last of Windsor herrings - 
 
 - 15 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 1855, a last at Worthing only about 
 
 - 12 
 
 
 
 
 
 King James sagaciously surmised that this kind of 
 legislation was setting up the fishmonger against the dealer 
 in flesh, and that fishmongers might raise their prices, 
 which they did not fail of course to do, when we consider 
 all the machinery used to create a demand for the article, 
 Fish, in which they dealt. They were enjoined to sell 
 their fish at moderate and usual prices (though the demand 
 was raised to such an extent), and the justices were to see 
 this was attended to, a.d. 1623.* 
 
 To these enlightened men, who think profoundly how 
 legislation ought to be carried out for the benefit of all, and 
 not to cause a conflict of classes, and to prejudice or exalt 
 one class at the expense of the other, the above account 
 may prove suggestive. 
 
 Ponds and all waters that could be made available for the 
 breeding of fish were formerly of great, and, as it would 
 sometimes appear, of exaggerated value. In Catholic times 
 there was a great demand for fish in Lent and on fast days. 
 
 * Proclamation. 
 
256 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Lent Is the season when little sea fish can be taken in the 
 best of seasons ; hence the attention paid to the stocking of 
 fish ponds with the fresh water tribes of fish. 
 
 About three centuries have elapsed since the first moot- 
 ing of the question about fish diet. Some persons now 
 advocate the abstiaence from flesh and fish, and recommend 
 others to become converts to their mode of dieting them- 
 selves. The Court quietly, like the Legislature, partake of 
 the prize ox, and the Greenwich dinners upon the little 
 fish known as white bait. The British are allowed to eat 
 what they like, and no licenses are required, no recog- 
 nizances taken. What is best for the human sustenance is 
 left for mankind to determine and select from a lengthy 
 catalogue of articles furnished by God's good providence. 
 The choice of food is a matter of opinion. Borough ma- 
 gistrates no longer spend their time in punishing those who 
 became law-breakers, by eatiag what they like, and which 
 suits them best. Tastes do not agree. The persons de- 
 voted to a difi^erent diet try to convert others to their 
 opinion. Much argument, but no law, is had recourse to. 
 When Dr. Delany, the Dean of Downe, published, in 1734, 
 his tract, "The Doctrine of Abstinence from Blood De- 
 fended," the meat-eaters were especially satirical against 
 that renowned founder of an universal Peace Society.* 
 
 Early Account of Gipsies. 
 
 The lanes and commons of old England were in ancient 
 time without the occupants, which are now deemed to be their 
 appropriate ones, sheltered under tents and the tilts of carts. 
 No encampments of a foreign race sent forth their parties to 
 the neighbouring towns to be stared at for their strange 
 features and novel mode of life. 
 
 * Fry's Treatise on Fish Breeding. 
 
EARLY ACCOUNT OF GIPSIES. 257 
 
 Our object is to illustrate the time when parties of gipsies 
 were first seen in this country roving about in their accus- 
 tomed way, and the impression they created upon our 
 ancestors. These were surprised at the appearance in 
 numbers of a foreign race, speaking a strange tongue, which 
 the lower orders even now take to be a slang dialect invented 
 by them to assist in communicating with each other when 
 planning or carrying out their frauds. 
 
 That individuals have discovered Hindustani words among 
 our wanderers of the country downs and heaths is a known 
 fact. Many believe such instances, however, to be excep- 
 tional, and account for the circumstance in various ways. 
 
 Recent researches into eastern antiquities have enabled 
 Sir Henry Kawlinson to ascertain the date of the migration 
 of the gipsies from India towards the west. In the fourth 
 century they proceeded to Beloochistan ; from thence they 
 reached Susiana, and in the sixth century they occupied the 
 Chaldean marshes ; from whence they were moved to the 
 Cilician gates, and continued to inhabit North Syria till 
 the Greek emperors moved them to Iconium. In the 
 thirteenth century they had reached the Bosphorus, and 
 they were first heard of in Europe in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury. Their arrival in Moldavia occurred in 1428, where 
 they number 130,000, and are badly treated and sold. 
 Consul Gardner, who has described them, says *, " they call 
 themselves by the Egyptian appellation ' Pharaon.' Every- 
 where their dialect corresponds with the Hindustani, and in 
 Aleppo they may be conversed with in that language with- 
 out difficulty." 
 
 An entry in the parish register of baptisms at Lyme will 
 prove that this people had reached the south-western parts of 
 Engla.nd in Queen Mary's reign : — 
 
 "Feb. 14, 1558. Joan, the daughter of an Egyptian, born at 
 Charmouth, the quarters theyre being fixed." 
 
 The minister deemed the occurrence sufficiently remark- 
 
 * Meeting Geographical Soc. Feb. 25. 1856. 
 
 S 
 
258 SOCIAL HISTOET OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 able for him to add some information beyond the mere 
 baptismal entry, and not surprisingly so, as he had adminis- 
 tered the rites of his church to one of a foreign race that 
 had made their appearance in England not fifty years before. 
 
 Would that ministers recorded remarkable occurrences 
 more frequently. 
 
 Samuel Eid, in his " Art of Juggling or Legerdemain*," 
 speaks of what he was informed of and could gather of the 
 performers in this line, and states that " this kind of people 
 beganne to gather ahead as the first here about the southern 
 parts of England only about the year 1512." 
 
 "What he wrote of their characteristics will serve for 
 comparison with their descendants of the present day. We 
 might receive it as a portraiture of a modern group round 
 their camp fire in one of our southern shires. 
 
 " Certain Egyptians banished their country, belike not 
 for their good conditions, arrived here in England, who, for 
 quaint tricks and devices not known here at that time 
 among us, were esteemed and held in great admiration, 
 insomuch that many of our English loyterers joined them, 
 and in time learned their craftie cozening. The speech 
 which they used was the right Egyptian language, with 
 whom our Englishmen conversing at last learned their 
 language. These people continuing about the country, and 
 practising their cozening art, purchased themselves great 
 credit among the country people, and got much by palmistry 
 and telling of fortunes, insomuch they pitifully cozened poor 
 country girls both of money, silver spoons, and the best of 
 their apparel, or any goods they could make." 
 
 The same writer speaks of GUes Hather and one Calot, 
 the king and queen of the gipsies, who rode through the 
 country on horseback, and, in strange attire, had a pretty train 
 after them. 
 
 The gipsies early incurred the Imputation which has clung 
 to them up to recent years — of carrying oflf children. In 
 Wellington church, Somerset, is the effigy of Judge Popbam, 
 who tried Guy Faux and his fellow conspirators of the Gun- 
 
 * Lond., 1612, 4to. 
 
EARLY ACCOUNT OF GIPSIES. 259 
 
 powder Plot. The tradition is that he was recovered from 
 gipsies who had carried him off, and that his wanderings 
 with them, continued as they were for several years, restored 
 his delicate constitution to a healthy state. 
 
 In some counties this people did not find favour, and this, 
 too, when very little ceremony was used in dealing with those 
 who were not in good odour. Five of these people, some 
 of them bearing north country names, as Featherstone and 
 Fenwicke, were hanged in one day at Durham simply be- 
 cause they were Egyptians ! * Gipsies were to forfeit all 
 their goods and chattels, and to leave the kingdom within 
 fifteen days after command to do so, on pain of imprisonment. 
 
 The gipsies continue to be what they were when they first 
 landed. They frequent fairs and assizes. The gaUery of the 
 Court at the Lent Assizes, Dorchester, in 1855, was in great 
 part filled with that strange people, for whom a cold shower of 
 rain had made shelter desirable. Fortune-telling still brings 
 in from towns no small gains, and wiU do so while super- 
 stition lingers, f 
 
 A few Specimens of Merchants' Marks, a species of Hieroglypliics introduced into tliis 
 Country by tlie Flemings. 
 
 * Burn's Parish Registers, St. Nicholas, Durham, 
 t See Notes and Queries, April 6. 1855, for an article and reference 
 to Hoyland's work on Gipsies. 
 
 s 2 
 
260 SOCIAL HISTOET OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Medical Practice. — Care of the Sick and of the Poor 
 by the Mayors. 
 
 How can the account of any period be complete as a 
 picture of the time without full mention of the condition of 
 the poor members of society, and their bearing and relative 
 position to the class above them? When we hear of the 
 poor of former reigns living in comparative comfort, possessed 
 of rights of common, protected from abject want owing to 
 the absence of that competition which an increased population 
 occasions, we are apt to conclude, being led away by the 
 erroneous description, that the real comforts of the lower 
 orders have gone on decreasing. Just as the meanest mem- 
 ber of civilised sgciety surpasses in the enjoyment of comfort 
 the highest child of barbarism, so in many particulars does 
 the lowest inhabitants of a borough in Dorsetshire possess 
 advantages which were not enjoyed by the better classes in 
 the reign of Queen Elizabeth. To establish this proposition, 
 some entries shall be given with others that may appear 
 pertinent. 
 
 Besides the great sufferings of the poor from the scarcity 
 of wood, before coal was introduced iato Dorset, we may add 
 the absence of a regular system of provision for their neces- 
 sities by Poors' Laws. 
 
 When John Garland was Mayor of Lyme in 1569, that 
 ofiBcer recorded his care of the afflicted poor in various 
 ways: — 
 
 Item, gave to Elizabeth Harris first in her sykness, and 
 
 to John Porcher, being both syke - - - xii 
 
 Item more to Elizabeth Harris the 16th January xii 
 
 Item to her when she went to Lechecraft with her - ii vi 
 
 Thus it appears that the leech or medical practitioner did 
 not reside in Lyme. We find shall that this personage was 
 a priest who journeyed from his residence to Lyme to seethe 
 
MEDICAL PRACTITIONER. — CHARGES. 261 
 
 patient. Thus Lyme was without a medical practitioner. 
 What a deprivation would this now be thought to be ! A 
 patient that required attention was in these days set on horse- 
 back and taken to be boarded near this medical priest, and 
 this, too, when so ill as to require attendance. 
 
 Item, for the coming first of the prist for his paynes - ii*. 
 
 Here we have the cost of a medical practitioner's advice 
 and his journey. Where did he reside? Perhaps the priest- 
 doctor had been a dispossessed inmate of some neighbouring 
 monastery. Newenham and Ford Abbeys had witnessed 
 very possibly the eifect of his exercise of medical skill. He 
 was one who 
 
 " knew 
 The virtues of all herbs of mount or vale, 
 Or greenwood shade or quiet brooklet's bed." 
 
 Southey's Madoe. 
 
 In a subsequent entry we find — 
 
 Item, to her agayne when she came home and returned, xiirf. 
 
 The priest did not board the patients. She had her 
 " tables," that is, her board, found in the very house or near 
 the priest, and the Mayor of Lyme paid for the same as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 Item more payd for her tables for four weeks - v«. iiijrf. 
 
 Thus board for a sick person at per week was Is. 4rf. 
 
 The advice given to poor Elizabeth Harris was charged 
 and entered separately: — 
 
 Item more for lechecraft first - - iii«. iiijrf. 
 
 Item more to Bowden's daughter to fetch salve for her - xiid 
 
 This charge would warrant a belief that the priest lived 
 
 as far off as Ford Abbey, a distance of ten miles, or even 
 
 Crewkerne, still further. 
 
 s 3 
 
S62 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 The same mayor dispatched another afflicted townswoman 
 named Alice Berret, who furnished matter for another 
 entry : — 
 
 Item, paid the prist for lechecraft and for her tables, x5. 
 
 Mr. Robert Davy, Mayor of Lyme, in 1569, took care of 
 a Fleming who had been hurt in some fray. 
 
 Item, paid to William Merchant [most probably a barber who 
 practised surgery] for healing the Fleming's head, and three 
 days his meat and drink, 20d. 
 
 The clergy and the Jews were the leading men of the 
 medical profession during the 10th and 11th centuries. 
 From 11.31 down to 1163 the Popes took occasion to thunder 
 against practising ecclesiastics. A chief justice about the 
 year 1223 recommended to the Bishop of Chichester one 
 Master Thomas, an army surgeon, as one who knew how to 
 cure wounds, a science particularly needed in the siege of 
 castles. Barbers assisted in baths, shaved, and applied oint- 
 ments. Henry V., at Agincourt with 30,000 men, had 
 one surgeon and fifteen assistants. During the reign of 
 Henry VIII. there were twelve surgeons in London. In 
 1512 physicians and surgeons had to be approved of by the 
 Bishop of London or the Dean of St. Paul's.* 
 
 Females were everywhere to be met with practising the 
 healing art. 
 
 The tooth-drawer's, now the dentist's art, is not of recent 
 date. Sir John Blagrave, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 
 had all his teeth drawn, and afterwards had a set of ivory 
 teeth in again, f Otter, in Ben Johnson's " Silent Woman," 
 says all her teeth were made in the Black Friars. 
 
 Eccleston quotes Guy de Cauliac, who published a system 
 of surgery in 1363 for the classes into which surgeons might 
 be divided, and their style of practice : — 
 
 * We believe the Archbishop of Canterbury has the privilege of 
 granting a license to one medical man each year to practise as a 
 physician, 
 
 T Ashmole's Museum, Notes and Queries. 
 
SYSTEM OF 8UEGEEY. — MIDW1VE8. 263 
 
 I. Follow Eoger and Eoland and the four masters, and 
 apply poultices to all wounds and abscesses. 
 
 II. Follow Brunus and Theodoric, and in the same cases 
 use wine only. 
 
 III. Follow Saliceto and Lanfranc, and treat wounds with 
 ointments and soft plasters. 
 
 IV. Germans who attend the armies and promiscuously 
 use charms, potions, oil, and wooL 
 
 V. Old women and ignorant people, who have recourse 
 to the saints in all cases. 
 
 Down to the time of William Estouteville, the Cardinal 
 Legate and Archbishop of Rouen, who reformed the Uni- 
 versity of Paris, 1452, a mist of superstitious awe still hung 
 over the '' clerks in physic," or professors of medicine, none 
 of whom were permitted to marry.* 
 
 The midwife was, like the physician and the surgeon, an 
 important person in the eye of the church, and was not 
 allowed to exercise her office until she had been duly 
 examined and licensed to do so by the bishop or ordinary, 
 or his chancellor or commissary. 
 
 The midwife baptized children in case of great necessity. 
 The child so baptized was afterwards brought to church for 
 inquiry to be made about it, but was not re-baptized. 
 
 In a license granted by Thomas Exton, Kt., Doctor of 
 Laws, Commissary-General of the Dean of St. Paid's, 
 London, in 1675, to Anne Voule, she is declared, upon the 
 examination of able, cunning, and expert women, to occupy 
 and exercise the office of midwife. Anne Voule was not to 
 forsake the poor woman to go to the rich, and in no wise 
 to exercise any manner of witchcraft, charms, sorcery, invo- 
 cation, or other prayers, than such as may stand with God's 
 laws and the king's. She was not to connive at or allow 
 any baptizing by any mass or Latin service. A century 
 before a midwife had to make oath that she would use pure 
 and clean water only, and not any rose or damask water, or 
 that made of any confection. 
 
 * G. M., Notes and Queries, 
 s 4 
 
264 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 At bishops' visitations the form of summoning all phy- 
 sicians, surgeons, and midwives, to show by what authority 
 they practise and exercise their several offices, is stUl adhered 
 to, though now but a vain form.* 
 
 Mrs. D'Ewes, the mother of Sir Symonds D'Ewes, was 
 attended in her confinement at Coxden Hall, near Ax- 
 minster, about the beginning of the seventeenth century, 
 by a midwife whose head being on one side from deformity, 
 her appearance greatly terrified the lady. Sir Symonds 
 D'Ewes suifered in his right eye all his life from her want 
 of skill. When Mrs. D'Ewes set out with the infant for 
 London, and arrived in one day at Dorchester, the shocks 
 sustained, owing to the road and the particular bmld of the 
 vehicle, were so great, that the infant son and heir cried so 
 violently all the way that he ruptured himself, and was left 
 behind at that town under the care of Mrs. Margaret 
 Waltham, a female practitioner. 
 
 AVhile medical practice was in its unimproved state, agree- 
 ments for the cure of diseases for a specified sum were very 
 general, as among quack doctors to the present time. With 
 some this mode of proceeding has great charms. To agree 
 to give a certain sum is a test of the patient's faith in the 
 skill of his medical attendant. At the January sessions, 
 1634, held at Blandford, it was represented that one Agnes 
 Hoble, of Toller Porcorum, widow, was languishing with 
 a dangerous and deadly disease, for the cure of which the 
 sum of 12 Z. was demanded; the Court ordered the church- 
 wardens and overseers forthwith to levy a rate upon the whole 
 parish to raise the sum of 8Z., which they are directed to pay 
 " to the partie that shall undertake the said cure, taking from 
 him good caution for performance thereof." 
 
 The magistrates of Dorset had not yet withdrawn their 
 countenance from female practitioners. Grace Greetch, wife 
 of Richard Greetch of Stockwood, set forth, in a petition to 
 the magistrates, that she had endeavoured to cure Bridget 
 Parker of that place of a disease she had. This woman 
 
 *■ Sussex Archseol. 
 
EEMAEKABLE MEN. — ANDREW BOEDE. 265 
 
 quack must liave taken her patient into her house — 
 a customary thing — where she died ; for she alludes to 
 having been at charge for her burial. 
 
 Sir John Strode, Knt., had ordered the overseers of the 
 poor to pay her eighteen shillings for the medical care and 
 burial expenses, which they refused to do. The Court 
 made out an order for the overseers to pay the money, 
 or to be bound over to the next sessions to answer their 
 contempt.* 
 
 Remarkable individuals have belonged to every profession. 
 To receive them and their sayings and doings as ordinary 
 persons is a great error. "We must exercise due discretion 
 to select an ordinary type, or the acts arising from a dis- 
 tempered brain may pass current for the manners of the 
 age. * 
 
 Dr. Andrew Borde, a native of Sussex, and long a prac- 
 titioner at Winchester in the reign of Henry VIII., to whom 
 he was physician, did and said many strange, witty things, 
 which were exclusively his own as an individual. Much 
 curious matter can be gleaned from his history, that exhibits 
 the manners of his time and class. Learned, travelled, 
 meddling with astronomical prognostications, which are fairly 
 supposed to have been for the purposes of astrology, living in 
 celibacy, drinking water three times a week, wearing a hair 
 shirt next his skin, and having his burial-sheet at the foot of 
 his bed — are so many notes for his biographer. The age in 
 which he lived has affected every particular, as well as his 
 mode of increasing his practice. In the absence of a news- 
 paper or other medium for advertising. Dr. Andrew Borde 
 frequented fairs, markets, and places of public resort, where, 
 like the Italian quack doctor of the present day, he harangued 
 the assembled crowd. His eloquence, like that of his mo- 
 dern compeers, abounded with wit. It must have been 
 remarkable, for his imitators were numerous, and had, like 
 the physician from his Christian appellation, the name of 
 Merry Andrews, now generally applied to itinerant eques- 
 
 * Mr. T. Hearn, " Qui Quondam." 
 
266 SOCIAL HISTOEY OF THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 trian performers, whose jocose humour is specially exercised 
 in dialogue with Merryman, the chief joker. 
 
 The portrait of a Dorset physician, an A. M., residing at 
 Bridport in the reign of James I., wiU serve to indicate a 
 change in manners. Doctor Grrey was a little desperate 
 doctor commonly wearing a pistol about his neck. As most 
 of the gentlemen of the shire that were young and sociable 
 were adopted his sons, we cannot hesitate to ascribe con- 
 viviality as being a characteristic of this medical practitioner, 
 or, as appears on his tomb at Swyre, 1612, " Professor of 
 Medicine." When a sheriff's officer, disguised as a pedlar, 
 once served him with a process, he seized him, drew a great 
 run-dagger, and brake his head in two or three places. 
 
 Dr. Grey was famed for a point of practice much thought 
 of in those days, — the predicting how long the patient would 
 last, or, as is elsewhere expressed, having a "judgment good 
 to discern how near men were to their ends." He used to 
 pronounce beforehand at what time the patient would begin 
 to talk lightly, and when lie still, and when depart. This 
 he did, among others, to a famous character of Dorset called 
 Golden Argentine, from his riches and display. When the 
 sheriff was at Dorchester with sixty men, this desperate 
 doctor came, protected by twenty of his adopted sons, true 
 roysterers no doubt, and those the lustiest young gentlemen, 
 and of the best sort and rank, and drank before the Sheriff, 
 who had some writ out against him, bade who dare to touch 
 him ; and so after a while blew his horn — a singular ap- 
 pendage for a physician, and came away.* 
 
 All physicians did not rely solely upon their intimate 
 knowledge of the nature of man — as their name implies,' — 
 but dealt in the mysterious occult workings of the Almighty 
 as veiled in the system of the universe, to be disclosed by 
 the deep science of astrology. Drugs might work to the 
 desired end, and the physician not see how the result was 
 likely to obtain. Hence the adept consulted the stars as to 
 
 * Common Place Book. Communicated by H. Fleetwood Sliup- 
 pard, Esq. to Notes and Queries, April 7. 1855. 
 
PHYSICIANS. — JOHN CASE. 267 
 
 whether a cure was to be, or was permitted to be effected. 
 He treated himself as an agent of limited powers, and cast 
 a patient's nativity to discover if those powers and skill were 
 permitted to be crowned with success. It is probable that 
 many patients would have despised a practitioner who looked 
 only to his Herbal and store of drugs, and neglected Capri- 
 cornus and Ursa Major. How could the unlearned fail to 
 be awed by a language or jargon so profound and diffuse, 
 that a dictionary of the technical terms, by James Wilson, 
 sold for 14s. ? Many may have practised astrology in self- 
 defence ; some with an eye to fortune. Let Dr. John Case, 
 a native of Lyme, who became a noted London practitioner 
 of physic and astrology, serve as an example of this class. 
 He possessed the magical utensils of the famous LiUy, so 
 that he was looked upon as his successor. Granger records 
 of him that he would sometimes expose these articles used 
 by Lilly in derision to his intimate friends, and particularly 
 the dark chamber and pictures whereby that famous conjurer 
 used to impose upon persons under pretence of showing them 
 persons who were absent. Dr. Case had that worldly wis- 
 dom which led a man to accommodate himself to the opinions 
 and habits of the time. 
 
 Over his door in London was a distich which is said to 
 have procured him more solid advantage than Dryden ob- 
 tained by all his works : — 
 
 " Within this place 
 Lives Dr. Case." 
 
 His poetic vein was in reqaest to furnish an inscription for 
 his pill-boxes : — 
 
 " Here's fourteen pills for thirteen pence 
 Enough in any man's own conscience." 
 
 The practice of astrology in physic had long been cus- 
 tomary ; but in the time of the Commonwealth the lavifulness 
 of this union had been questioned. The subject was sub- 
 mitted to a meeting of Baptist ministers at Bridgewater in 
 the year 1656. A decided answer was not given, from the 
 
268 SOCIAL HISTOET OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 great difficulty of the question ; but great caution was re- 
 commended, and it was stated that sereral brethren, who 
 knew and practised the same, " formerly had left the prac- 
 tice thereof, upon the account of evil work they saw in the 
 same." 
 
 How interesting has proved the chit-chat visit of many a 
 fashionable physician in the present day. Ailments and the 
 on dits of his coterie are his staple commodity. How greatly 
 dull by comparison with Dr. Case's stock of subjects. Our 
 physician, selected here to illustrate the manners of Charles 
 ir.'s reign, was the author of the " Angelical Guide," show- 
 ing men and women their lot and chance in this elementary 
 life, in four books 8vo. Granger writes, " it is one of the 
 most profound astrological pieces that the world ever saw. 
 The diagrams would probably have puzzled Euclid, though 
 he had studied astrology." 
 
 "We need feel no surprise that this physician was success- 
 ful. Having realised a good fortune, he was still living In 
 the reign of Queen Anne, and placed over the arms upon 
 his carriage this line, containing an allusion to his good 
 fortune : — 
 
 " The case is altered." 
 Bloodletting, considered to be necessary for every one in 
 health or not, at spring and fall, was an operation performed 
 by the country surgeons on the labourers on a Sunday 
 morning, at a charge of 6<f. each. Bleeding in bed by a 
 barber was, in the reign of Charles II., sometimes charged, 
 for a lady, so high as 10s., and for a gentlemen. Is. and 2s. Qd. 
 The operator perhaps harboured the patient at an additional 
 charge. Barbouring by the year was charged 16s. Super- 
 stition had marked certain days in each month as dangerous 
 for bloodletting, which were called parlous days. In July, 
 the 1st, 7th, 13th, 12th, 25th, and 20th were of the above 
 kind. 
 
 As the whole population had recourse to bloodletting 
 twice a year, bleeders or barbers were In constant demand. 
 
 From the time of Plutarch they have had the character of 
 being before other men In the collection and circulation of 
 
LOATHSOME DISEASE. — FUNERAL CHARGES. 269 
 
 intelligence, and this in every country. When the good 
 town of Shrewsbury was desirous to maintain its honour in 
 1535, as three dukes were said to be likely to pass through it, 
 a reward of 2s. 4d. was given to R. Clarke, barber, riding 
 to know perfectly of the coming of the great personages. 
 
 When our ancestors were likely to be infected, or their 
 feelings shocked by the presence of loathsome disease, a 
 preventive or precautionary line of policy was sometimes had 
 recourse to by our ancient mayors for their townsmen's 
 good. Thus, John Garland, Mayor of Lyme in 1569, ac- 
 counts : — 
 
 Item, gave to a toker (i. e. a tucker or fuller) wlio had 
 
 the leprosy, to rid him ----- iiijs. 
 
 Tradition was, perhaps, still busy with the horrors of that 
 loathsome disease which had raged so furiously in this 
 country, and which had occasioned a leper's hospital to be 
 founded in the West, now Broad Street. 
 
 Being on the subject of the poor and afflicted, a few brief 
 entries not foreign to it are appended : — 
 
 s. d. 
 Three yards of cloth to make a shroud (there was 
 
 no coffin used for the poor, only a winding sheet)* - iii iii 
 Making the grave for a child born dead - - iii 
 
 Shroud for this child ----- vi 
 
 Grave for Thomas King - - - - y 
 
 John Davye, Mayor of Lyme, 1589-90. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Item more given to the poor people in the almeshouses 
 and other at Christmas tyde and at Ester, as by a 
 nowtt (note) doth appear - - - - 2 3 
 
 Pd. unto Henry Palmer for the keeping of a sick 
 
 Scottishman in his house, 3s., and a porsyvant - 4 2 
 
 Pd. to widow Cadwell for houseroom and sending 
 Jonne Gill, and for a shroud to Long John, with 
 other charge - - - - -150 
 
 Gave the young woman that died in the almshouse 10 
 
 * The burial of a poor young man at Lichfield in a coffin in 1632 is 
 recorded as a strange occurrence. 
 
270 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 s. d. 
 Pd. for clothes given Wayers Basterd - - 5 2 
 
 More for the keeping of the Basterd frop the week be- 
 fore Easter to a fortnight after Michaelmas, at six 
 pence per week, which is xxij weeks at 6 pence - 13 
 Paid goodwife Cram for the keeping of the basterd, 
 
 and \6d. for a whittle - - - 6 
 
 Similar duties are now delegated to overseers. These little 
 matters tlien occupied the attention of the highest local 
 authority, the mayor, who gave in 1569 
 
 £ s. d. 
 To the poor this year - - - 6 8 
 
 There were at this time many small charity properties 
 which had been given to the mayor for the poor, who often 
 must have been, as my researches show, greatly distressed. 
 
 In 1587 rye was in use, and an instance occurs of this 
 article of food being sold to the poor by the mayor at a 
 reduced price, when every article of food was at a famine 
 price : — 
 
 Item, that was lost upon 10 peck of rye that was sold to the 
 poor, iiij«. virf. 
 
 Fagots and money to the amount of 22s. \0d. were given 
 to the poor at Christmas. 
 
 Every Friday four poor men received, in the reign of 
 Queen Mary, each one penny (that was enough for the 
 maintenance of each for the day), the income arising from 
 the property left by John Tudbold to the poor. 
 
 Thomas EUesdon and John Holcomb were wardens of 
 these lands. 
 
 The London physicians of note in the reign of James I. 
 were better paid than those of the present day. Dr. Giffard 
 and Dr. Baskervill visited Paul D'Ewes, Esq., the father of 
 Sir Symonds D'Ewes, twice a day during his illness in 
 Chancery Lane, and received at each visit 20s. each. 
 
 A medical man rode twenty-five miles to see the Eev. 
 Giles Moore, in Sussex, about 1665, and received each time 
 
physicians' charges. 271 
 
 12s. A physician came the same distance, and charged 1/. 
 Another physician came and stayed two days, who was paid 
 1/. 10s. 
 
 In 1602 two surgeons, who " searched a corpse suspected 
 to be of the plague," were paid 6s. 8d.* 
 
 A medical bill about the time of Charles I. is given as a 
 curiosity : — 
 
 Goodman Hoor ows per — 
 
 
 s. d. 
 
 p a purgative potion 
 
 It p 2 purges more . - - 
 
 01 00 
 2 06 
 
 Sum - - 3 6 
 For salere and ointment (sum defaced), 
 Paid 5s. for William Hore, by consent. 
 
 Samuel Lact. 
 
 A purge for a young lady at school at Richmond is charged 
 Is. 6d. in 1646. 
 
 If in 1590 we find a good mayor of Lyme paying Is. 6d. 
 to those that did watch by day, for fear of the sickness, for 
 four days, we also learn in 1724 that a reward was given for 
 information ; thus : — 
 
 Paid two messengers from Halstock to give notice the small pox 
 was there, 5s. 
 
 The mayor had at times to provide for distant journeys to 
 enable the afflicted to find a cure which was denied them 
 nearer home. 
 
 In 1665 Robert Vickery had given him to help him to Ireland to 
 obtain cure of his lameness, 10s. 
 
 When so much medicine was given under mysterious 
 names, some quacks by their nostrums acquired a pro- 
 digious fame. This poor man was on his way to some 
 wonderful practitioner, and the authorities approved of his 
 voyage and assisted him. 
 
 Quack doctors were the first advertisers in newspapers in 
 
 * Nichols. 
 
272 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 1652. Some of these were princely in their equipage, and 
 had certificates hanging about of cures effected upon eastern 
 monarchs. 
 
 A century ago a medical man in the cathedral cities put 
 on his full dress before paying his visit to the bishop. 
 
 The gold-headed cane carried by physicians was long 
 viewed as containing some safeguard against infection, which 
 the rnembers of the medical profession are supposed now-a- 
 day to possess as a great secret among themselves. 
 
 Any account of medical practice in this part of England 
 would be imperfect without an allusion to the contract 
 entered into by the medical man of the Exeter county gaol 
 at the time Howard visited that city. This individual had a 
 clause in the contract to exonerate him from attendance and 
 services when the gaol fever should rage. Is not this equiva- 
 lent to a soldier agreeing to serve, but stipulating that he 
 should have a complete exemption in case of real war ? 
 
 Medical accounts used to be settled on fair-day ; a prac- 
 tice which has continued in some country towns. 
 
 Old women, in respect of midwifery and acquaintance 
 with herbs, have retained some credit in the rural districts to 
 the present time. 
 
 In the fondness for simples, enmity against other now pre- 
 ferred medicines was engendered. 
 
 " For salves the country parson's wife seeks not the city, 
 but prefers her garden and fields before all outlandish gums." 
 
 The last professed herbalist's shop has not long ceased to 
 exist in Holborn, London. 
 
 It was the celebrated Dorset worthy and learned physician 
 Dr. Thomas Sydenham, of the reign of Charles II., who in- 
 troduced, amidst great opposition, the cool treatment in 
 small pox, and administered, in some diseases, laudanum and 
 bark in attacks of ague. 
 
 How can we sufficiently estimate the value of Dr. Jenner's 
 discovery, by which that dreadful scourge, the small pox, 
 is exterminated ! How much does private history contain of 
 small pox and its ravages, the flight from it, and incidents 
 arising from this ! 
 
PRE9CEIBING SIMPLES. 273 
 
 Before the introduction of turnips, potatoes, &c., the 
 scurvy was very often felt by even the better classes. There 
 were cases of that affection, at the time the potato disease 
 raged, from want of vegetables. 
 
 Scurvy grass, which cost by the peck Id., and diet drinks, 
 so high as 13s. 6d., appear in diaries and account books. 
 
 The power of herbs against the pestilence or plague itself 
 was declared to be sufficient when these were administered 
 in a drink. The patient was to take : — 
 
 Vedervoy - Featherfew. 
 
 Matfelon - Black knapweed, Jacea nigra. 
 
 Mogworte - Mugwort, wormwood, Artemisia vulgaris. 
 
 Solyge - (Difficult to identify.) 
 
 Scabyos - Devil's-bit, Scabiosa succina. 
 
 Avense - Bennet, Geum urbanum. 
 
 These were to be mixed in equal proportions, washed, and 
 bruised with stale ale, and six spoonfuls taken at a time. If 
 taken in time we are assured " hy t chal distroye the corop- 
 cion and safe the man or the woman."* 
 
 The mania for sea-water bathing, sea air, and for mineral 
 waters has been treated of under the head of the " Decay of 
 Mercantile Coast Towns." 
 
 The modem practice of medicine, and the elegant exhibi- 
 tion of drugs from every part of the world which our drug 
 warehouses present, force us to conclude that we now enjoy 
 advantages over those whose maladies had to be assailed by 
 practitioners armed only with simples. 
 
 Our common garden herbs possess undoubtedly valuable 
 properties. These it was the common practice of the herbalist 
 leech to exaggerate. Take the case of the sage plant, whose 
 reputation enthusiasts had raised. It was good against in- 
 fection, and had such special properties, that, though it was 
 not asserted that immortality would result from its use, it 
 
 * Bury MS., published by the Bury and West Suffolk Archaeological 
 Institute. 
 
274 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 was demanded why any one should die that had sage in his 
 garden : — 
 
 " Cur moriatur homo, cui salvia crescit in horto ?" 
 Truth compelled the disappointing answer : — 
 
 " Contra vim moi'tis non est medicamen in hortis." * 
 
 It has been somewhere beautifully said that " the reap- 
 pearance of exploded errors, both in natural and moral 
 science, is one of the least satisfactory phenomena observable 
 in the history of our race." 
 
 Happening to be where a young female had behaved in a 
 way that indicated an aberration of reason, a grave old man, 
 not redolent of modern civilisation, recommended by all 
 means this person should have a sound whipping. He de- 
 sired the old trial and test of insanity to be resorted to as 
 was the practice in the days of Henry VIII., when the 
 stump of a tree set up for such a purpose was called " the 
 tree of truth." Let the reader read the biography of Sir 
 Thomas More, in Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors. 
 Were stripes really believed to be a cure for madness, ac- 
 cording to the notion of the time, or were they intended to 
 cure feigned madness ? 
 
 Thus we see vestiges of old medical opinions and practice 
 still remaining in the land, which we meet with from time to 
 time in remote corners. The bustard is extinct in southern 
 England, but ignorance still holds its ground. 
 
 Churchwardens provided "silk strings" and "rib 
 bond " for the poor children of either sex that had the 
 king's evil, at a cost, about the year 1664, of 5d. and Id. 
 each ; sometimes the charge was 2d. The strings for the 
 poor of the parish of Minchinhampton and for " ribbon," 
 in 1688, amounted to \l. 5s. ; in 1689, to 7s. 4d. ; in 1690, 
 to 4s. 8d. Mr. Bruce writes that the entries for ribbons 
 continued up to 1736. For touching for the king's evil 
 see the Life of the Duke of Monmouth, &c. 
 
 * Notes and Queries, Dec. 2. 1854. 
 
RESPECT TO PROFESSIONAL MEN. 275 
 
 For superstitious treatment of disease at Uffculm, in East 
 Devon, see a communication of a resident esquire in 1855. 
 It is a practice there to carry a child fasting on Sunday 
 morning into three parishes, which, according to popular be- 
 lief, is of great service in hooping-cough. 
 
 For a sore mouth the eighth psalm is read seven times for 
 three successive mornings over the patient.* 
 
 Medicines of the patent kind were sold at stationers', or by 
 the side on the same shelf with stationery at grocers' and 
 mercers' shops combined. Chemists and druggists' shops in 
 small towns date from the first quarter of the present cen- 
 tury. These are substitutes for apothecaries' shops. Few 
 medical practitioners in the country now keep an open shop, 
 or sell anything except to a patient. 
 
 Physicians and general medical practitioners have risen in 
 public estimation, and are much advanced in relative position 
 of late years. The professional man a century ago was not 
 treated with much real respect by gentlemen of landed 
 estate. Dr. Thomas Bill received 121. 10s. per quarter as 
 one of the physicians to Henry VIII. Physicians received 
 in James I.'s reign a guinea for each visit, though there were 
 two in a day. The guinea was comparatively worth much 
 more than it now is. Reverting to the respect paid to pro- 
 fessional persons, it may be remarked that an articled clerk 
 who accompanied his master to a great squire's house dined 
 in the housekeeper's room. 
 
 To conclude this subject, let me add, that most carefuUy 
 prepared returns of health, duration of life, and such matters 
 confute individuals who, till lately, without contradiction, 
 went on denouncing modern civilisation for the physical 
 weakness which it entails. The contrary is the fact. 
 
 The hot beverages did not bring in nervous diseases ; for 
 the case books of Sir Theodore Mayerne, physician to 
 James I., prove that half the ladies mentioned were treated 
 for " melancholia" or " hypochondria." f 
 
 * Notes and Queries, 
 •f Athenaeum, V. Sternberg. 
 T 2 
 
276 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Sanitary Measures, the Neglect and Observance of. — Dung- 
 Mixens in the Streets, 8fc. — The Streets straitened by 
 sundry Erections. 
 
 Our ancestors were in many particulars very attentive to 
 certain sanitary precautionary measures. Again, in other 
 matters they appear most negligent. This was strikingly 
 evinced in respect of the collecting matter for manuring their 
 little fields and gardens, which they did in a dung-mixen 
 near the door of their dwelling-house. Others sometimes 
 were induced to complain of this practice, which led to 
 presentments of juries ; but it is not in every case that the 
 dread of disease alone operated. The obstruction of the 
 highway, and the dislike of particular individuals to a con- 
 tiguous offensively-smelling heap perhaps led to the institu- 
 tion of complaint and recourse to presentments. We shall 
 see that some felt aggrieved at the encroachment of neigh- 
 bours and the too great proximity of another's mixen. 
 
 "Whether the disposition to produce a sound state of sani- 
 tary matters increased or diminished in past centuries is a 
 question of interest. Some would at once assign all attention 
 to sanitary laws as the oifspring of modern times. The 
 truth is, that in the time of the Plantagenets the health of the 
 community was more thought of than in that of the Stuarts. 
 
 In the year 1472 King Edward IV. in a proclamation 
 enjoined the execution of divers statutes made against the 
 casting of filth, dung, and other noyous things into the Eiver 
 Thames, and into the rivers flowing by other cities and 
 borough towns of this realm. 
 
 The injurious eflfects upon the human frame of noisome 
 smells and emanations from open drains were acknowledged 
 in some towns. The covering over of the gutters and 
 drains on the quay of Yarmouth in 1610 is recorded as a 
 work deserving notice. 
 
 The centres of some of the best squares of London now 
 adorned with gardens were places in which heaps of filth and 
 rubbish were laid. 
 
SANITARY REGULATIONS. 277 
 
 The corruption of the King's Ditch at Cambridge was 
 judged to be the secondary cause of plague, the corruption of 
 the air being the primary cause. This ditch was, however, 
 left to be cleared out when the first hard frost should set in. 
 It did its work during the autumn. * 
 
 There are entries which might mislead us as to the state 
 of the streets had we no other evidence. Thus in 1604 
 Robert Thornton was paid for making clean of the street at 
 Lyme weekly for the year 4s. An order would seem to em- 
 brace everything that could be desired in the case. 
 
 " 1632. Every inhabitant shall every Saturday, before 
 night, cleanse the street over against his dwelling-house, so 
 far as his house extendeth ; and shall remove the soil, dung, 
 and other filth that shall be there gathered, so as the streets 
 may be kept clean and in a decent and comely manner, upon 
 pain of forfeiture of I2d., to be levied by way of distress by 
 the Serjeants." f 
 
 Our further inquiries lead to proof that these sweepings 
 went to augment the dung-mixens in the course of formation 
 in the streets, which were complained of when the site caused 
 obstruction or annoyance to some individual — not other- 
 wise. When Mary Bartlett, aged 105, conversed with Mr. 
 Edwin Chadwick, this aged serge-maker clearly described 
 this state of the streets of Exeter about 1760-80. They 
 were filthy and unscavenged. 
 
 In 1613 a jury presented R. Gale for having made a 
 dunghill close by the house of Joseph Alford to the hurt of 
 the king's subjects. J 
 
 " Item, p'nt 9d. E. Gale erexit quoddam sterquilinium juxta 
 domum Joseph Alford ad nocumentum populi dmi. Eegis." 
 
 Gregory Alford, a leading character personally known to 
 Charles II., made, after his return to Lyme at the Restora- 
 
 * Cambridge Transactions. Bohn, 1855. 
 ■f Corporation Order Book of Lyme. 
 J Court of Hustings Book. 
 I 3 
 
278 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 tion, a dung-mixen before his house in the street to the 
 annoyance of others, and was ordered to remove the same. 
 In 1669 Sarah EUesdon, one of that family to whom 
 Charles II. looked for assistance in escaping from Charmouth 
 after the Battle of Worcester, with three others, was pre- 
 sented for making a dung-mixen in the street at the church 
 hatch, which was to be removed under pain of 5*. 
 
 In 1675 Humphry Limbry and two others had notice 
 from the Court of Hustings to remove each a dunghiU made 
 before his door in the street in a month's time, under a fine 
 of 3s. Ad. John Wesley, an ancestor of the celebrated 
 Wesley, was on the jury. John Drake was ordered to re- 
 move a dunghill which he had made before his shop in the 
 middle of Broad Street. 
 
 Little attention was paid to these orders of the court. 
 The same nuisances were committed as if the presentments 
 were necessary for a jury to make by virtue of office, while 
 the compliance with the order was optional. 
 
 Three noisome dunghills in the middle of Broad Street are 
 complained of in 1677. In 1684 several dunghills between 
 Mr. Spicer's and Stile Lane were to be removed in two 
 months, or a fine of 6s. 6c?. to be imposed. Many more were 
 presented at a court baron in 1685. 
 
 A dunghill against the cockmoil, or prison, was presented 
 in 1749. The practice of forming such in different streets 
 was not discontinued. 
 
 Noisome dunghills were complained of as such in some 
 cases where the stench was intolerable. Thus, at Castle 
 Combe,in 1417, one on which the entrails ofthe animals killed 
 by the inhabitants of the street were thrown, was ordered 
 to be removed. It was, however, more the obstruction of 
 the thoroughfare than anticipated evils to men's health that 
 prompted complaints. 
 
 In 1590 the inhabitants of the west street of Castle 
 Combe were enjoined to remove a collection of filth at a 
 certain man's house, and to lay no more there within X foot 
 of the tvat/.* 
 
 (}, r. Scropc, Esq., History. 
 
SCAVENGERS. — JOHN LOCK, 279 
 
 Great cities were no exceptions to the general presence of 
 dunghills. When royal personages were about to make a 
 formal entry into a place, suitable preparations were ordered. 
 Dunghills were deemed obstructions and unseemly. Queen 
 Elizabeth being expected at Worcester in August, 1575, the 
 Council Chamber ordered that every person having any 
 " donghills, or myskins and tymber within the liberties, shall 
 cause the same to be carried away within ten days next, and 
 so shall keep clean their soyles, and pave the same with all 
 convenient spede to a certain point, and beyond this to a 
 certain point the soyles or foot ways unpaved were to be 
 covered with gravel." 
 
 May we not say that the clearing of the streets from 
 obstructions had as much to do with the order as any 
 sanitary reasons ? The timber and dunghills would have 
 obstructed the procession.* 
 
 Lyme had its scavenger. This worthy, John Lock, care- 
 fully collected the dirt, and made a dimghill in the middle 
 of Broad Street, the principal street of the town. For this 
 he was complained of in a presentment in 1753, and in 
 1756 he and his sons had made five dunghills in so many 
 streets. 
 
 Lest any reader should suppose that this disregard of the 
 preservation of health, and of a decent appearance of the 
 principal streets, was confined to one town, we add the 
 following : — 
 
 The spot at Weymouth, or more properly, Melcombe 
 Regis, now called the Parade, was that chosen for the 
 throwing aU the rubbish of the place, and bore the name of 
 the Mixen.^ 
 
 The pigs belonging to Thomasin Davie, keeper of a 
 public-house, wandered about the streets of Lyme, which 
 was, perhaps, a not unusual circumstance ; but they preju- 
 diced the graves, yflinoh canaed a, ■presentment in 1677. The 
 pigs at Brighton caused an order that no hog was to go 
 
 * Hist, of Worcester. 
 
 t Ellis's Hist, of Weymouth. 
 
 T 4 
 
280 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEKN COUNTIES. 
 
 unrlnged on the Steyne, where the nets lie, under a penalty 
 o{8d. 
 
 One who chanced to enter Lyme, Weymouth, and the 
 generality of our towns when the streets were studded with 
 dung-mixenSj and covered with impurities, might have 
 quoted these lines from Dante's " Inferno :" — 
 
 " Needful it is that oui- descent be slow 
 Until the senses somewhat are inured 
 To this foul blast, and it shall case to vex." * 
 
 That harm might arise from decomposing animal and 
 vegetable matter was an opinion firmly entertained, 
 but never fully acted upon till pestilence stalked abroad. 
 There was no provision against the coming of epide- 
 mics. When they were firmly seated, then sanitary measures 
 were enforced. The following routine was practised : — 
 AU dogs and cats seen at large were to be killed ; pigs were 
 to be kept from wandering ; and no carrion or manure was 
 to be deposited in the streets.f The leaving dead animals 
 about only a little way from dwellings was a conunon practice, 
 and everywhere occasioned presentments. 
 
 The decaying bodies of traitors suspended upon gibbets 
 at no great elevation from the ground in the confined street 
 of small country towns were productive of disease. To 
 view the change produced upon the body of a once honoured 
 friend or pastor must have had a very depressing effect upon 
 those who espoused the cause for which the gibbetted man 
 had suffered extreme punishment. Those who had opposed 
 the dead victims could not have rejoiced in the stench that 
 fiUed and oppressed theii' street. In a sanitary point of 
 view, the authorities punished aU alike when ordering the 
 the suspension of the victims of rebellion. 
 
 The quarters of the Monmouth men executed at Lyme 
 Regis in the autumn of 1685 fell down upon the ground, 
 
 ' Pollock's Translation of Dante, Canto XI. 
 I See A\'aylen's Hist, of Marlborough. 
 
WANT OF CONVENIENCES. 281 
 
 a prey to the numerous dogs kept before the dog tax in the 
 May following. The mayor. May 11th, 1686, enters: — 
 
 To mone pd. for beare at Geo. Alford's for the men that set up 
 the rebells quarters that were fallen, Is. 
 
 The absence of the necessary, as they are now deemed, 
 convenience to houses, was felt to be a public nuisance when 
 numbers were congregated. Mr. Thomas Denslowe's 
 scholars and the grammar school-boys, in 1597, offended to 
 an extent such as to draw forth a presentment of the jury 
 that decency might be preserved. The entries are contained 
 in the foot-note below.* 
 
 The town of Newcastle was much in the same state at the 
 outbreak of the cholera there. 
 
 In 1617 the authorities of Weymouth addressed them- 
 selves to the great evil that arose from children " filthing 
 the streets." For each offence a child above seven years of 
 age was to be fined sixpence, and the child's master or 
 parent to be made to pay. This offence was transferred in 
 1654 to the churchyard. An order in the archives exists 
 against making it " a place of convenience." 
 
 Mrs. Mary Bartlett, of Exeter, aged 105, described how 
 annoying it was to walk the unscavenged, narrow, dark, and 
 filthy streets; how dangerous to pass through them at 
 night, for fear of being befouled by what was thrown out of 
 
 * 1597. Item, that henceforth Thomas Densloe's scholars do not use 
 to go into the cleves to dung there, to the annoyance of those that go 
 that way, nor the way that leadeth into the cleves, upon pain of 3*. id. 
 
 Item, that henceforth the schoolmaster which teacheth grammar do not 
 let his scholars to filth the churchyard, nor going into Silvester Jur- 
 deyn's cleves, upon pain of Zs. id. 
 
 1598. Children not to be filthy in or make the streets a convenience. 
 
 At Castle Combe, in 1590, offenders in this way in the churchyard 
 were to pay for every time xiirf. Children, whose parents are mentioned 
 by name, not to do as above. The parents not to sufier them to do so in 
 the streets, and the way towards the Mill Green, 
 
 There was a public convenience on the Gun Cliff in 1645. Five 
 shillings are charged for nails to mend the " house of office in the 
 Clifi"." 
 
282 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 the windows, and during rain by the water-spouts from the 
 unguttered houses.* 
 
 Private convenience was too often consulted to the dis- 
 regard of the public good, even to the straitening of the 
 streets. Though these were, as now appears, so very nar- 
 row, stones were set up to answer the purpose of tables or 
 stools for housewives to stand their tubs upon in order to 
 wash out of doors and in the public street. Attention 
 having been directed to this evU, it was ordered in 1597 that 
 Phelps, the mason, and others that had set up any stones to 
 wash upon, do presently remove them upon pain of 3s. 4<f. 
 
 This was not the whole extent of the encroachments now 
 being made in our time. One Mark Barnes was fined 2s. 6d. 
 in 1599 for having set out a bulk or staJl (which was an open 
 projecting shop) for the straitening of the street ; such had 
 no glass windows. Several persons were presented this same 
 year for having made seats before their doors without any 
 agreement with the mayor. These were stone seats, a per- 
 manent evil ; still it was agreed that 4rf. should be paid for 
 each for the use of the town. The liberty or license taken 
 in erecting such things would seem to be the evil the 
 authorities restrained, and not the straitening the thorough- 
 fare. Ask permission and pay the money, all else seemed 
 disregarded. In 1615 a bench in advance of a shop window 
 was presented, and an order made that in future 2d. should 
 be paid. 
 
 One way of obstructing the streets and making a great 
 litter in the highway was the " winnowing of corn." This 
 practice was denounced in 1562. The entry is curious: — 
 
 {Court of Hustings Book, marked 3., 20 April, 1562.) 
 
 Curia legalis cum vis franc pleg. 
 Item, ordinatum est quod Johannes Hassard nee aliquis alius 
 habitans infra villam de Lyme Us non purgaverint grana sua 
 a pulvere in Eegia via ante domes suas decetero subpena cuilct 
 delinquenti forisfac per quotet temp sic invent quin solid. 
 
 * Communication to Mr, E. Chadwick. 
 
PKESENTMENT8. — SANITARY MEASURES. 283 
 
 This specimen of an entry at a court leet with view of 
 Frank Pledge, decries, under a penalty of 5s., the win- 
 nowing corn in the king's highway before men's houses. 
 
 The following order was made that another evil might be 
 corrected : — 
 
 1671. Divers persons having put up posts, erected porches, and 
 built bulks, and other things, by permission of one or more 
 lords of the manor (i. e. members of the corporation) in future 
 the mayor and six others must consent. 
 
 Mr. Solomon Andrew was presented in 1695 for having 
 set up a new upping stock at his new house in Church Street. 
 
 The care shown in shutting up persons suspected of being 
 infected has been treated of elsewhere. Messengers were 
 paid for bringing tidings of the presence of infectious diseases 
 in the neighbourhood, and even within a circuit of twenty 
 miles. The ale-tasters performed their office that the sellers 
 of drink might only send out such as was good for man's 
 body. In various ways the care of our mayors was mani- 
 fested for the health of the community. 
 
 An entry of the date of 1551 proves that the beach was 
 sometimes driven up so as to close the mouth of the river, as 
 it is in modern times. The accumulated water and filth 
 then becoming very offensive, the mayor had a passage for 
 the river dug through the beach, with a due regard to 
 sanitary measures. 
 
 1551. Item, paid to Colman and to Preehyll to dig away the 
 chesU beach) of the bodyU (Buddie), 8d. 
 
 The fearful visitations of disease, whether devastating 
 plague, or stoupe gallante, the sweating sickness of the Tudor 
 reigns, impressed fear upon all classes, and gave some indi- 
 viduals of the better sort an impression that cleanliness was 
 a preservative against these evUs. Some nobles were before 
 the age in enlightened views upon sanitary matters. Those 
 who would fain connect cleanliness with godliness, and who 
 advocated the removal of noisome collections of matter, 
 found in too many unwilling ears. Like many improvers. 
 
284 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 their wisdom was accounted impertinent folly. Thomas 
 Howard, afterwards the third Lord Bindon, once Mayor of 
 Weymouth, wrote in 1581 to William Pyt, his correspondent 
 in the corporation. 
 
 " I ernst to find the town clene, and all the annoyance behind 
 the town removed according to promise." 
 
 The Court of Hustings at Lyme had made sanitary orders 
 respecting the casting filth upon the beach at the Cobb gate, 
 where the tide might carry the same away. These orders 
 were by some disregarded, and probably ridiculed. The 
 offenders figure in a presentment at the Hustings Court, 
 A. D. 1580. 
 
 Item, presentant quod Thomas Hiat et Philippus Haroy jecerunt 
 fimum infra le full sea mark contra ordinem in ea predicta 
 editum. Ideo quilibet eorum in misericordia, iij«. iiijrf. 
 
 Also they present Thomas Hiat et Philip Haroy for 
 having thrown filth within the full sea mark, contrary to the 
 order in the aforesaid particular set forth. So each is 
 amerced 3s. 4<f. 
 
 The bodies of deceased friends were not subject to any 
 uniform law respecting their interment. Sir Symonds D'Ewes 
 kept his grandfather's corpse at Coxden for fourteen days. 
 His own father's body was despatched from London towards 
 Suffolk the third day after his decease. Mr. Boldero, his 
 friend, a lawyer, was buried the day after his death, as was 
 an old servant of the family. Of two children, each was in- 
 terred the day after his decease. Mr. John Drake, of Ash 
 House, in Musbury, near Axminster, who died the 11th of 
 April, 1628, was buried privately the same night. Mr. 
 WUlougliby, of Pehembury, Devon, who died aged eighty- 
 six, was buried one week after.f 
 
 It may be said with truth that the interval between death 
 
 * Sherren Papers. 
 
 t Diary of Walter Yonge, Esq., p. 112. 
 
PRECAUTIONS AGAINST SICKNESS. 285 
 
 and burial was much shorter in those days than at present, 
 seldom exceeding two or three days. 
 
 Funerals were, in Devonshire parishes, usually fixed for 
 Sunday. The deceased was laid at the beginning of the 
 afternoon service in the middle of the centre aisle, and was 
 left there to the close, when the obsequies were performed. 
 In the heats of summer the inconvenience of this practice, 
 owing to the length of time since the decease took place, was 
 felt to be very great. At times the congregation suffered 
 in a sensible degree from a practice of the worst example. 
 
 Precautions against the Spread of Sickness, 
 
 Weee this heading of our subject read in a recent news- 
 paper, our thoughts would revert to the removal of nuisances, 
 covering of drains, and other similar modes of guarding against 
 infection by lessening the extent of the nidus in which disease 
 delights to revel. Such, however, is not the nature of the 
 precautionary measures adopted in the Tudor reigns, which 
 we have in view. 
 
 "We intend to exhibit the course pursued, not when disease 
 might be expected, but when it had arrived in full force, in 
 order to prevent it from spreading. 
 
 The sweating sickness, the plague, and other great forms 
 of the visitation of disease, entered our towns. Our mag- 
 nates treated them like unruly characters, and endeavoured 
 to shut them up, to imprison them wherever they were 
 found, and set watchmen to guard the locality in which they 
 had seated themselves by night and day. 
 
 When the plague visited the Universities, those who did 
 not set off shut themselves up in the colleges, allowing no 
 one to have intercourse with them. The plague was be- 
 lieved to be greatly dependent upon the moon, and that the 
 change of that satellite made appear who was infected or 
 not.* 
 
 * Cambridge University Transactions during the Puritan Contro- 
 versies of the sixteenth and seventeenth eentuiies. 
 
286 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEKN COUNTIES. 
 
 Families could not be shut up without some care being 
 taken of their having food for their subsistence during the 
 period of their incarceration. Hence there were entries in 
 borough archives about expenses incurred in carrying out 
 this system. 
 
 In the year 1590, there was paid at Lyme to " those that 
 did watch by day for fear of the sickness, for four days 
 Is. Gd." The watchmen were to prevent intercourse with 
 infected parts and persons. 
 
 There is an entry in 1645 of money paid for the con- 
 stables' bill for relieving thirty-two poor persons shut up upon 
 suspicion of infection, lOZ. Os. Id* This shutting up of so 
 many may have often proved a very cruel proceeding. Oc- 
 casionally charges were made for the support of infected 
 people who were shut up ia other contiguous parishes. The 
 mayor, 7th Aug. 1593, " delivered," as he entered it " to 
 the constables of Whitchurch, 20s. for the infected people, 
 whereof I (he enters) could collect but 14s. M., so the rest 
 to the town account." 
 
 Are we to suppose that all, either the incarcerated or their 
 friends without, were obedient to the orders and special 
 directions of corporations ? No ; some were contumacious 
 and rebellious, so that recourse to violent measures was 
 necessary. 
 
 When any infectious disease broke out, the authorities 
 were empowered, by an Act passed in the reign of James I., 
 to shut up the sick ; and the watchmen or guards were pro- 
 tected from any proceedings against them, owing to violence 
 used in keeping them closely confined. Discipline had to 
 be administered, when the persons so watched proved 
 troublesome. At Great Staughton, Huntingdonshire, the 
 constables, so late as the year 1710, charged thus in their 
 accounts : " Pd. Thomas Hawkins for whipping two people 
 that had the small pox, 8c?. ;" and in 1714, " Pd. for watch- 
 ing, victuals, and drink for Mary Mitchell, 2s. Gd. Pd. for 
 whipping her, 4rf." 
 
 * Town Accompt Book. 
 
PREVENTION OF DISEASE. 287 
 
 Individuals in good circumstances would not always readily 
 obey borough mandates. 
 
 At Lewes, in 1710, a Mr. Holmwood occasioned a charge 
 of 12s. for several men to watch to prevent him from bringing 
 his son up in the town with the small pox. 
 
 Parties running away from the plague without a clean 
 bill of health were advertised in the newspapers, and the 
 parish in the country in which they were supposed to have 
 secreted themselves. 
 
 We must not confound the watching or sitting up with 
 an individual sick person with this public exercise of caution 
 towards other towns. The mayor ministered to the wants of 
 the afflicted like an overseer now-a-day. Mr. William 
 EUesdon, Mayor of Lyme, in his accompt 1595, enters — 
 
 Item, paid to Goodford's daughter for watching two nights with 
 Hill the hellyer, 6d. 
 
 Friendly parishes sent persons round upon the outbreak of 
 disease. " These prophets of ills " were rewarded as was 
 really just : " Paid two messengers from Halstock to give 
 notice the Small Pox was there, 5s."* 
 
 In 1602 a surgeon was paid for "searching a corpse sus- 
 pected to be of the plague, 3s. Ad." This is equivalent to 
 " making a post mortem examination." 
 
 The plague being once declared, all dogs, swine, cats, and 
 tame pigeons seen at large were killed, as it was believed 
 these animals spread infection, f 
 
 The dog, be it remembered, was sacrificed in Etruria to 
 Apollo in times of pestilence. 
 
 The flocking to court of persons to be touched for the 
 king's evil was checked. 
 
 Nosegays were placed in courts of justice, not for orna- 
 ment, but as preservatives against the pest. 
 
 The number of dogs killed in Westminster was surprising. 
 Before the tax on dogs, persons kept dogs in great numbers. 
 
 * Archives of Lyme. 
 
 f Waylen's History of Marlborough. 
 
288 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Windows facing houses suspected of containing infection 
 were to be kept closed. 
 
 Fires were to be made in movable pans in cburches. 
 Bonfires were lighted in the streets. At Leicester the fol- 
 lowing bye-law was made, which may indeed be styled a 
 despotism : — " Any one having been visited with the plague 
 who for two months presumes to go among those that are 
 clean, to forfeit 51., or lose his freedom and be banished for 
 ever out of the town without any redemption." * 
 
 The presence of the plague being declared, the inhabitants 
 of towns took flight. Herein they deemed their safety to 
 lie. In certain " Constitutions" or laws framed at I^yme 
 in the year 1570, we may learn the habit of flying from the 
 seat of the dreadful pestilences of early times, which desolated 
 England. 
 
 A freeman was to lose his valuable franchise if absent 
 a year from the borough, plague time excepted. 
 
 The same fear which prompted flight to some, suggested 
 danger to those among whom they arrived. Intercourse 
 with the fugitives was avoided. Corporations and counties, 
 little imperia in imperio, acted up to the spirit of their own 
 bye-laws. We learn that in the " Great Plague," the 
 Gloucestershire men would not suffer the Bristol men to 
 have any access to them, as Stow writes, nor into their 
 county by any means. " Plague stones " still exist, upon 
 upon which deposits of provisions were made for those shut 
 out from intercourse with society from fear of infection. 
 Archives abound with entries touching the shutting up 
 towns against strangers in plague time. 
 
 When the plague raged in 1593, a proclamation prohibited 
 the holding of Bartholomew Fair, London, in the usual 
 manner, as people from every part of the realm attended it, 
 and might carry the sickness to all parts. As the wholesale 
 trade was so important, that was allowed ; while the retail 
 trade was suppressed, as if the wholesale clothiers would 
 
 * Nichol's History of Leicester. 
 
THE PLAGUE. — SANITARY MEASURES. 289 
 
 not have been as surely a medium of infection as the retail 
 dealers. 
 
 Among the preservatives against the plague by Francis 
 Herring, Doctor in Physic, 4to. London, 1665, is recom- 
 mended the frequent opening of the pipes from the New 
 River to cleanse the channels of every street, the cleaning 
 out of all ditches, and the ringing of bells often, and the 
 discharge of great ordnance to purify the air. 
 
 If the Londoners interfered with the country traders, it 
 will be found that the country in return was not slow to 
 legislate for traders coming from the metropolis. 
 
 When the plague raged at a distance, such as in London 
 or any other great town, fear suggested a cordon sanitaire, 
 a barrier to all coming from that way. Magistrates in 
 Charles the First's reign acted upon this fear, and endea- 
 voured to shut up the inhabitants of the infected place 
 for all practical purposes ; for they would not allow any 
 such to be received and sheltered from weather, or have 
 entertainment, or even refreshment furnished them. 
 
 This must always have proved ineffectual. Relatives could 
 not mercilessly turn the traveller from their door, but were 
 ready to incur some risk ; and the landlord could not bear to 
 close his doors against a roystering party of carriers, whose 
 revelling had often brought him much profit, and who would 
 resent his slavish obedience to the magistrates' order, and 
 draw down upon him the hostility of the whole fraternity. 
 
 In the following case the agreement appears to have made 
 all the difference in the amount of the offence. The magis- 
 trates of the Michaelmas Sessions, 1636, held at Bridport, 
 adopt all the terms of the agreement, and would have led in 
 the faction of Dorset against London. 
 
 " Forasmuch as information hath been given unto this 
 Court that an agreement was lately made by the inhabitants 
 of Blandford Forum, in this county, that (in regard of the 
 great danger of the infection of the plague, by carrying 
 goods, and travelling of passengers from London and other 
 places infected) no carrier, with horse, cart, or waggon, or 
 other passenger or traveller, on horse or foot, that should 
 
 u 
 
290 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 come from London or any other place Infected, should be 
 suffered to lodge or abide within that town or parish ; and 
 for that purpose a good and sufficient watch and ward shoidd 
 be kept by the inhabitants of that parish ; which agreement 
 was confirmed by Sir Francis Tulford, Knt., and Gerrard 
 Wood, Doctor of Divinity, two of his Majesty's justices of 
 the peace for this county. Notwithstanding which agree- 
 ment and confirmation, Thomas Stowell of the warnership of 
 Pymperne, within the parish (but without the borough) of 
 Blandford aforesaid, innkeeper, hath divers times entertained 
 carriers, travellers, and others that came from London, and 
 doth give out that he Avill continue to do so, which this Court 
 conceiveth to be done in contempt, and to be very dangerous 
 to the said town of Blandford, and to the country adjoining ; 
 and doth therefore order that the constables or other officers 
 of the warnership of Pymperne shall forthwith, upon sight 
 of this order, convene the said Thomas StoweU before some 
 one of his Majesty's justices of the peace of this county, who 
 is desired to cause the said Stowell to enter into good security 
 to appear at the next sessions, &c." 
 
 [And in default, he is ordered to be committed to the 
 county gaol.] * 
 
 WeyhiU and many other great fairs were not allowed to 
 be held the year of the plague, 1665, as the King's proclama- 
 tion sets forth. 
 
 During the raging of the great plague of London in 1665, 
 it was agreed " at Weymouth to watch to keep out people 
 infected with the plague." There is an entry at Lyme the 
 same year : — " Paid several watchmen, put on by Mr. John 
 EUesdon, upon neglect of others, and in observance of his 
 Majesty's strict order about the quarantine, 11." 
 
 The terror inspired by the plague, whatever that disease 
 may really have been, was very great. Seventy years ago 
 no one could have been found bold enough to have dug a 
 grave in one knoll in Lyme churchyard where those had 
 been buried who had died of the plague. It was believed 
 
 ' Mr. T. Hearn, " Qui Quondam." 
 
RAVAGES OF THE PLAGUE. 291 
 
 that the earth was deeply tainted with infection, and could 
 not be disturbed without imminent risk to human life.* 
 
 In 1604 the plague, which destroyed above 3000 weekly 
 in London, reached Exeter. In 1613 it raged many weeks 
 at Axminster, and carried off great numbers of the in- 
 habitants. In 1625 the plague was at Bridport, and in 1627 
 raged in other parts of Dorset. 
 
 The magistrates of Dorset relieved parties who were 
 greatly distressed after the visitation by the plague. 
 
 Hugh Densloe of Allington, a part of Bridport, glover, 
 had become miserably poor, owing to that town having been 
 visited with the plague. Since that visitation a flood had 
 carried away his house, — his whole property. The magis- 
 trates signed an order upon the deputy treasurer of the 
 county for 40s. t 
 
 The modus operandi adopted upon extraordinary occasions 
 by the magistrates was such as would puzzle the most saga- 
 cious to conjecture now-a-days. 
 
 After the plague that raged in the West had passed away, 
 by the time of the Midsummer Sessions, held at Shaftesbury 
 in 1629, one Symon Furnell, a poor labouring man, was an 
 applicant for relief. He was owner of a house near Shaston, 
 late in the possession of one Richard Street, who, and all 
 his family, died therein of the plague. No one had tenanted 
 the house since, not because no person could be found to do 
 so, but because no one was permitted by the magistrates to 
 occupy it. The poor owner of the house was distressed, this 
 having furnished the greatest part of his maintenance ; so he 
 prayed the assistance of the Court, as he could not, by reason 
 of his poverty, suffer the house to be any longer without a 
 tenant. 
 
 The magistrates entered upon this difficult piece of juris- 
 prudence, — the allowing the poor man to have some benefit 
 from the use of his own, and still to preserve the inhabitants 
 from an outbreak of plague. 
 
 * See Macaulay. 
 
 t Dorset Sessions, MS. " Qui Quondam." 
 u 2 
 
292 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEBN COUNTIES. 
 
 In more recent times, when human life has been required 
 to be jeopardised for the benefit of mankind, a person under 
 sentence of death has been selected, and life, and even re- 
 wards, were offered. This mode of proceeding had not sug- 
 gested itself to the worthy justices. They ordered that the 
 inhabitants of the borough of Shaston and the liberty of 
 Alincester should procure some person to go into the said 
 house, and to carry out such stuff as shall be found therein, 
 and cause the same to be burned, and then, " the said party 
 shall be shut up within the said house by the space of one 
 month next after, and he to be maintained indifferently be- 
 tween them ! " * 
 
 At the Michaelmas Sessions held at Dorchester, 1625, 
 an order was made for the collection of 40Z. weekly within 
 the divisions of Dorchester, Sherborne, and Bridport, to- 
 wards the relief and sustentation of the sick and distressed 
 people of the borough of Bridport, now visited with the in- 
 fection of the plague." Allington, a parish adjoining Brid- 
 port, was to participate. 
 
 In 1627 a rate was levied on the surrounding parishes for 
 the relief of Shaftesbury, the parishes of Gillingham and 
 Motcombe, and the liberty of Alincester, under a similar 
 visitation. The Court recites that the sickness doth stUl 
 continue in Shaston, very dangerous, and that the inhabitants 
 thereof are much impoverished thereby ; " in consequence 
 of wliich the Court ordered the divisions of Blandford and 
 Sherborne do contribute to their relief, f 
 
 * Mr. T. Hearn, " Qui Quondam." f Ibid. 
 
"GREAT PLAGUE OF EDWARD III." 293 
 
 The Great Plague of the Reign of Edioard III. 
 
 " jRex Sallivis de Lym, SfC, salutem. 
 
 " Quia non modica pars populi regni nostri AnglicB in prcBsenti pestilerdia 
 est defuncta" Sfc. 
 
 " Because a considerable part of our population of the kingdom of 
 England is dead of tte present plague," &c. 
 
 Ktmee's Fmdera. 
 
 What locality can be the peculiar site claiming as its own 
 subject the " Great Plague of Edward III ?" None surely 
 can be designated when all the whole world suffered. 
 
 To treat of this stupendous visitation at any length would 
 be foreign to these pages. The object aimed at is some such 
 mention of the particular facts that may establish a complete 
 realisation of the great plague as having raged in the West 
 of England. 
 
 While engaged in the perusal of the general history of so 
 great a scourge in the East, Sicily, Germany, and other 
 countries, we may read of its visiting the coasts of Dorset, 
 and thence spreading inland without feeling much local in- 
 terest concentrated upon our own part of the world. 
 
 Modern visitation of fell disease travelling from the East, 
 sparing those only as it were from caprice, and driven from 
 its victim by no art nor device of the physician, gives an ad- 
 ditional interest to the consideration of former pestilence, 
 particularly as to whether God in his providence has been 
 pleased to visit us with a heavier hand than heretofore.. The 
 reign of Edward III., in spite of astrology and much igno- 
 rance of physical causes and phenomena, is not so remote as 
 to be beyond historic times. The marvellous and the fabu- 
 lous can be sifted, and the solid facts be preserved. 
 
 The " Great Plague" of England and the "Black Death" 
 of Northern Europe appeared in the East in 1346, and was 
 brought from the Levant to the great towns of Italy in 1348. 
 It crossed the Alps that year, when, after spreading over 
 
 V 3 
 
294 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 France and Spain, it appeared on the sea coast of Dorset in 
 1349. Hence the pestilence was communicated to Devon 
 and other parts of the kingdom at a season of great pros- 
 perity. 
 
 One mile south of Axminster stood the stately abbey of 
 Newenham, whose annals have been lately published.* 
 During the administration of this Cistercian community by 
 Abbot Walter De la Houe, the most fatal pestilence recorded 
 in the history of mankind visited the house. 
 
 Twenty monks, three lay brethren, and eighty-eight 
 secular persons of both sexes, who lived within the walls, 
 were carried off by its violence, to the great loss of the 
 house (ad magnu' dampnu' hui' doms'), leaving of the members 
 of the convent only the abbot and two monks surviving ! 
 
 In the history of Castle Combe are these references to the 
 plague : — 
 
 A tempore pestilentias tenementum ruinosum et decassum. 
 Pestilentia prima et magna, 31 May ad 29 Sept. 1349.t 
 
 The duration of the plague is set down as being generally 
 of five months. In some parts nearly half the population is 
 said to have been cut off. The city of Bristol suffered so 
 that grass grew several inches high in High Street and 
 Broad Street. The Grloucestershire men, from fear, would 
 not suffer the Bristol men to have any access to them nor 
 their county by any means, having recourse to what in 
 modern times has been named a cordon sanitaire. This was 
 deemed a hardship, for the inhabitants of towns, judging 
 safety to lie in avoiding the crowded haunts of men, were 
 induced to fly into the country. 
 
 The Sarum registers from August 8, 1348, to Lady Day 
 1349, contain the admission of seventy incumbents. A 
 chaplain could hardly be had to serve a church under ten 
 marks, or ten pounds per annum, whereas one might have 
 
 * By J. Davidson, Esq. 
 
 t Hon. Poulett Scrope's History of C. Combe. 
 
OEIGIN OF THE PLAGUE. — SYMPTOMS. 295 
 
 been had at two pounds with his diet, and men would hardly 
 accept of a vicarage at twenty marks per annum. 
 
 Let Fabyan, Walsingham, Cantacuzenus, and other histo- 
 rians be consulted as to the origin, progress, and their account 
 of the nature of the disease, which quite puzzled the astrolo- 
 gers. What has been conununicated of the ravages of the 
 disease at Newenham Abbey will gain credit for Walsing- 
 ham's assertion, that in some parts scarce a tenth part of the 
 people remained alive ; that in many towns all the inhabi- 
 tants died besides those who fled, and that houses fell down 
 and were never rebuilt. In London 50,000 perished ; 
 Avignon, then the residence of the Pope, was nearly de- 
 populated. 
 
 In the East a bleeding at the nose preceded the pestilential 
 attack, and certain death. At Florence a swelling in the 
 groin or arm-pits larger than an egg marked the disease, 
 which, without fever in most cases, terminated fatally without 
 benefit from medical skill on the third day. Boccacio at- 
 tributes the plague to something corrupt in the air, while the 
 history of the time is replete with accounts of curious at- 
 mospheric phenomena, of comets, meteors, fiery beams, and 
 other coruscations. 
 
 The disease fell upon the brute creation, while great num- 
 bers of animals perished from inattention, their owners having 
 died. 
 
 The mere disease, however dreadful, is but a part of the 
 evils of such a time. These were found to be famine, &c., 
 and a raising of their wages by the labouring population. A 
 statute was passed for the old rate of wages, which was disre- 
 garded. Abbots, friars, and other great men were fined for 
 disobedience in this particular. The subject is, however, left 
 for the general reader. 
 
 We cannot refrain from exhibiting a proof how completely 
 man in every relation of life is influenced and affected by the 
 atmosphere, the phenomena, the medium in which his lot is 
 cast. Great natural disturbances on the surface of our planet 
 are felt through numerous ramifications. So many of the 
 
 V 4 
 
296 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 clergy fell -victiins to the great plague, that for want of 
 learned masters English began to be used in schools in the 
 teaching of young persons instead of French. 
 
 Remarks upon Domestic Architecture, Materials, Price, S^c. 
 
 In the south-west of England, where the red marl abounded, 
 mud houses, or mud mixed with chopped straw, called cob, 
 were constructed upon a stone foundation. In other parts a 
 stone foundation carried up of the same material was succeeded 
 by a wooden framework with mud between, and the whole 
 whitewashed. 
 
 In towns few houses were built of stone. The expense 
 was so much greater than was incurred for those of wood or 
 timber framework, as oak was very cheap. The latter were 
 to be found in Bristol and most of our country towns. The 
 stories projected, so that the upper rooms were the longest : 
 and in narrow streets persons could almost shake hands out 
 of the topmost windows. The plasterers fiUed up the space 
 between the framework. The souterrain or cellar had no 
 groined roof, as in the more costly buildings of cities ; it was 
 entered from the street by steep steps which encroached upon 
 the roadway. Low doors and a trap secured the entrance. 
 The shop was on the ground floor, with stalls or bulkheads 
 (a word often contracted into bulks) open to the street, in 
 which were no glass windows — another reason why our an- 
 cestors hailed the return of summer. The framework of the 
 Vicarage of Lyme, destroyed in the siege of 1644, was re- 
 built at a cost of 12Z. 
 
 When houses were constructed of wooden framework, we 
 can understand why aldermen were provided with a proper 
 hook and cord. In case of fire these were used to puU down 
 the wooden framework buildings in flames. 
 
CONSTRUCTION OF HOUSES. 297 
 
 Norway planks were known in England, doubtless, by the 
 12th century; but in small boroughs oak timber was, I may 
 say, solely used for the construction of houses, and also of 
 floors. In ordinary residences there was no ceiling. The 
 under side of the planking of the floors was whitewashed, 
 and this was the ceiling, so to speak, of the lower room. A 
 ceiling to rooms raised the character of the house. 
 
 The plaster was spread upon reeds as well as upon laths, 
 and was mainly composed in the towns near the greensand 
 formation of Fox mould sand or earth. Near Lyme people 
 dug pits close to the king's highway, which were very dan- 
 gerous, and the material thrown about made the way almost 
 impassable. Presentments of juries followed which tried the 
 Latin of the town clerk ; i.e. : 
 
 Item, presentant quod Thomas Case de Hole effodit terram ru- 
 bram Anglice Fox mould in Eegia alta via ducente vers' Three- 
 legged Cross. 
 
 Chimneys were rare in the country towns in the reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth. Leland had expressed some wonder at a 
 chimney in Bolton Castle. Fire-places and chimneys were 
 buUt very often of plaster only. Some allusion to this sub- 
 ject has been made elsewhere. 
 
 The burning of limestone in a kiln was not practised. 
 Neither coal nor culm was used for the purpose. A skilful 
 lime-burner used wood and frith upon the hills to calcine a 
 mass of stone, very ingeniously disposed so that all should 
 feel an equal degree of heat. Lime-burning was a trade — 
 an art. Very little lime was used. 
 
 The Somersetshire churches have been famed. They 
 were constructed of an inferior oolite from Hamden Hill, 
 commonly called Ham-hill, near Crewkerne. Beer-stone for 
 interiors, a freestone where the chalk and greensand pass 
 insensibly the one into the other, was much used. Portland 
 Purbeck, and Petworth quarries were early known ; but the 
 expense of conveying the material to a distance, except for 
 churches and great houses, kept the use of it within very 
 
298 SOCIAL HISTOEY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 narrow limits. Caen-stone was Imported, as its excellence 
 justified. The use of stucco as a protection to buildings con- 
 structed of perishable stone is very recent. 
 
 Healing or heahn stones, indurated flags used by helliers 
 for covering roofs, were from well-known localities, such 
 as Horsham, where the quarries are said to be worked out. 
 Slates may occasionally be meant; they were, however, gene- 
 rally called slatt-stones. 
 
 The fashion of bmlding towers about the middle and close 
 of the fifteenth century extended into the country. A mer- 
 chant named Borough built a goodly one in the Butter market 
 of Lyme. The merchants in the towns had their merchan- 
 dize stored in their own residences, the country not being so 
 secure as to warrant storehouses being away from the owner's 
 own eye. The tower was at the entrance, and had to do with 
 the security of the building, as we may suppose. A port- 
 cullis let down at night shut out the public from the inner 
 court. 
 
 There was a great fondness for these towers, which honest 
 Stow viewed and felt offended at. He judged some afflictions 
 into which the possessors had fallen to have been judgments 
 sent for their desire to overlook their neighbours. Thus in 
 almost every instance we find a novel introduction, however 
 useful and harmless, to have been designated by one class or 
 the other as positively sinful. 
 
 Oak Timber in the West of England, the Price, Labour about 
 it, Sfc. — Notice of the wooden framed Houses, Healing- 
 stones, 8^c. 
 
 In the reign of Henry VIIL, and for many years after, 
 oak timber was that principally in demand, as fir timber 
 from the Baltic was very sparingly imported. The roofs 
 of churches in many instances display a lavish expenditure 
 
VALUE OF OAK TIMBER. 299 
 
 of oak timber. It was much used for piers and sea defences ; 
 the great consumption about Lyme Regis was for the 
 construction of the Cobb and the sea defences of the town 
 against the inroads of the stormy element. Oaks set 
 upright in rows round great rocks had been the mode of 
 constructing the harbour from the reign of Edward I. 
 
 The value of oak timber was very inconsiderable. More 
 must have grown on the borders of Dorset and Devon than 
 could well have been used in that vicinity. The vessels 
 then in use were small craft. The material required for 
 them was trifling, and cost, like the beams for the roofs of 
 churches, a small sum. 
 
 Some years after, in 1614, when Mr. Brooke tendered a 
 bUl against extravagance in apparel, he observed that 
 " women carry manors and thousands of oak trees on their 
 necks."* 
 
 A brief illustration of this subject from ancient accompts 
 of mayors in 1545 is here offered. May not the page of 
 history be changed or even enlivened by our sturdy oaks ? 
 
 Many at first inexplicable entries appear in the reign of 
 Edward VI., about the mayor and his brethren "going to 
 the wood," and of their expenses " in the wood." In 1652 
 the sum of 3s. 4:d. is charged for " engrossing the inden- 
 ture of the wood called Chickeradge, between Mr. Pole and 
 the Town." This was the ancestor of Sir John Pole of 
 Shute House, near Axminster, the proprietor of a locality 
 on the north side of the road between Hunter's Lodge Inn 
 and Lambart's Castle, in the parish of Hawkchurch, now 
 called Chackeridge. The mayor used to meet Mr. Pole 
 at the wood, and buy okys (oaks) from him. 
 
 Many localities on the hills around Lyme were at this 
 time covered with oak timber, such as Trinity Hill, &c., 
 where the soil is either bare or lately planted with firs. 
 
 A separate heading in the mayor, John TudboU's account 
 
 " The Progress of Machinery and Manufactures in Great Britain : 
 Weale's Quarterly Papers in Engineering, vol. v. 
 
XX okis for 
 
 - 
 
 XX „ 
 
 - 
 
 ii „ 
 
 - 
 
 iv „ 
 
 - 
 
 vi » 
 
 - 
 
 ii „ 
 
 - 
 
 vi „ 
 
 - 
 
 56, which cost 30«. 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 12 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 300 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 for 1545, directs to the following details of the prices for 
 timber and wages. It stands as follows : — 
 
 Buying of the town okis * — 
 
 r hewing in the wood 1 
 Wages i sawing Vid. a day. 
 
 L setting by the sea-side J 
 Meat and drink in addition, 3d. 
 
 I, John TudboU and John Daye, bought of 
 
 John Long 
 
 Hary Danyell 
 
 Hary Cranly 
 
 John Abbot 
 
 Robert Cok 
 
 Tho, Lov'gis 
 
 Richard Lassy 
 
 An oke of John Days f - 
 
 Sum of all these okis aforesaid, 56, whii 
 
 The which did make, one with another, with (pieces ?) 
 
 that I had in the wood besides, 56 load. 
 The cost of every carydge of the said okis, without 
 
 meat and drink - - - - - 1 4 
 
 The carydge of the whole amounteth to, without meat 
 
 and drink - - - - - J3 14 8 
 
 Item, more for meat and drink to the said carriers for 
 
 the said okis - - - - - 16 8 
 
 Thomas Dare and Jesse did carry of the aforesaid okis 
 
 30 okis, and the men of Musbury did carry the rest. 
 The which okis cost at the fyrst, with the carriage, 
 
 meat and drink in all - - - £6 16 
 
 (i. e. 2s. 5d. each oak, showing that the expense of 
 carriage, meat, and drink was nearly four times 
 more than the original cost.) 
 In 1546 t Rusley was paid for 2 oaks - - 4 
 
 * Mayor's Accompts, 1545. 
 
 ■\ The initials of this worthy are carved on the column opposite the 
 south door of Lyme Church. 
 
 I A sack of lime, in 1546, cost 5d. 
 
VALUE OF OAK TIMBER. 301 
 
 In 1547, hauling a load of oaks from Wooton (3 miles, *. d. 
 
 and very steep hill) - - - - - 1 8 
 
 In 1551, the carriage of oaks is charged as follows : — 
 Carriage of 3 oaks from Hawkchurch, and meat and 
 
 drink - - - - - - 9 
 
 Paid to Robert Pynny for bringing home of 2 oaks from 
 
 Hawkchurch - - - - - -210 
 
 A. D. 1744. 5 oak trees bought of J. Tucker, Esq., of 
 
 Nash, cost the corporation - - - £ 7 14 
 
 In 1849 a load of oak timber was worth II. to \l. 15*., 
 according to locality. 
 
 The celebrated Round Table at "Windsor was made about 
 the year 1356. The Prior of Merton sold from his wood 
 near Reading fifty-two oaks for 2QI. 13s. Ad., or at the rate 
 of 10s. 3rf. each. 
 
 In 1394, forty-two oaks in the park of Combe sold for 
 9Z. 19s. \d., or 4s. %\d. each; while 467 maples brought 
 19/. 13s., or \0d. each. 
 
 In 1458 one great elm tree there sold for 20s. Gotham 
 Wood, belonging to the manor, was let to farm according to 
 the practice of that and later eras.* 
 
 In the reign of Edward VI., 200 large trees, " grossos 
 arbores," near Drogheda in Ireland, were valued at 16/., 
 i. e. Is. Id. each.t 
 
 Most of the houses in narrow, streets were constructed of 
 oak framework, oak beams, and oak flooring. The latter 
 was laid lengthways, and not across the floor joists, as in the 
 present day. There was no ceiling to the under rooms. 
 The beam, joists, and flooring were whitewashed. Oak 
 wainscoting, tables, chests, and furniture were universal. 
 Much of this has been bought up and made its appearance 
 as an ingredient in modem fittings up of rooms after the 
 old style. Very little lime was used. Oak came much 
 cheaper than Ashlar stone. 
 
 Laths were not in use. The daubers, afterwards plas- 
 
 * J. P. Scrope, M.P., Hist, of Castle Combe. 
 
 t From the ancient records of the Irish Exchequer. Notes and 
 Queries, communicated by James F. Ferguson. 
 
302 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOT7THERN COUNTIES. 
 
 terers, spread their mortar upon spear grass. Healing- 
 stones, or, as they began to be called, slatt-stones, were 
 sparingly imported from Cornwall for the houses intended 
 to be stone-healed, of which there were few, as thatch was 
 very general. 
 
 Early Civil Engineering, particularly in respect of Marine 
 Constructions. 
 
 The Cobb, or ancient Harbour of Lyme Regis, about a.d. 1588 and ISSG. 
 
 At what epoch could it be said there existed no civil or 
 royal engineer ? The genus is not of recent growth, though 
 many of the appliances are so. When such men as the free- 
 masons flourished, and were executing their immortal works, 
 was there not ability of the highest kind available? The genius 
 that could plan and construct a cathedral would not shrink 
 ^om a marine work, though in practice a stranger to the 
 tempest lashed sea coast. The theoretical was in Plantagenet 
 reigns blended with the local and practical. On many 
 occasions we have instances of the summoning of those 
 who had local knowledge, — sailors, clothiers, persons skilled 
 in fortification, to communicate with great men. 
 
 If the civil engineers of Great Britain want an ancient 
 appellation, let them adopt that of the reign of Edward I., 
 Prodeshommes des plus sachantz. Four of these, viz. civil 
 engineers, were to be sent to that king, who were most 
 clever and sufficient in the laying out and planning a New 
 Town, who were to be all ready to go whither they 
 might be ordered. 
 
DESTRUCTION OF LYME REGIS. 303 
 
 The subject leads to the laying out and founding the 
 borough of Lyme Regis. This was a Bastide, Ville 
 Neuve or Ville Franche of Dorset, as much as those an- 
 cient towns so called in the once English possessions in 
 France. 
 
 On this occasion the want of local knowledge, excusable 
 as there had been no respectable inhabitants, and espe- 
 cially the ignorance of the action of land springs and high 
 tides upon the land, here composed of the superior Blue 
 Lias, was fatal. 
 
 The town was destroyed by the joint action of a storm 
 and the slipping of the land. Practical geology was a 
 branch of human knowledge quite unknown. 
 
 After such a lesson as that afforded by the destruction 
 of the town in the last year of the reign of Edward III., 
 we may readily believe great attention began to be paid 
 to the protection of the sea front, and the construction of 
 the harbour. 
 
 John Huderesfield was, we may fairly suppose, an en- 
 gineer for marine constructions. He obtained a grant from 
 King Richard IL, a.d. 1389, for making a harbour at the 
 mouth of the Brit, two miles below Bridport, for which he 
 was to have a toll of one hal^enny on every horseload of 
 goods imported or exported. In 1444 a new port was 
 constructed a short distance from the former haven. The 
 name of the second engineer is unknown, unless it be found 
 in the Dom Book of Bridport. 
 
 That a favourable view of the projected work should 
 be taken by the bishop was highly important. In this 
 undertaking the Bishop of Sarum looked upon the affair as 
 so likely to prove beneficial, that he granted an indulgence 
 for building and repairing a new port, to be called Brid- 
 port Haven, for the preservation of merchants and mariners.* 
 Bishops were then, it is probable, in close relations with 
 architects, the civU engineers of the day. 
 
 From a remote period the mode of constructing marine 
 
 * Reg. Aiscott, quoted in the last edition of Hutchins. 
 
304 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 works such as was displayed in the Cobb, the name of the 
 harbour at Lyme Regis, was the same as that pursued 
 in the reign of Elizabeth. It was built, viz. Le Pier, Le 
 Key, or Le Cobb, de maeremio et petris, of timber and of 
 rocks. 
 
 These rocks abounded westward of the town as debris of 
 the greensand cliiFs of hills which are outliers of the Black- 
 down range of hills ; they lay upon the shore, and were 
 floated to the sea-work by means of vats or casks. These 
 were dropped in their site, and then oaks were " squatted " 
 or let in on either side, thus : — 
 
 Ancient manner of constructing piers. 
 
 Rocks are floated by modern engineers, and placed in front 
 of some sea-works at Banff, in Scotland. 
 
 These cockle rocks — a local term — and oaks were em- 
 ployed to " enforce a harbour in the main sea, and for the 
 groynes or jetties, as well as the defences of the town 
 from the ravages of the sea." There were no sea walls. If 
 any " grave, skilful mason had given in his opinion that 
 nothing but stone could secure the dominion," he had not 
 been attended to, for the carpenter was followed, who said, 
 « 'Twas better by far to defend it with oak." The Cobb 
 and sea front must have presented a very different appear- 
 ance, when such numbers of dark brown trees were in sight, 
 to what it does when other material of a light colour has 
 been substituted. Oak trees were in abundance in West 
 Dorset and South-east Devon. Age and the " artes " worms 
 so affected the sea-works, the wooden walls of Lyme, that 
 about the reign of James I. or Charles I. stone began to be 
 substituted. 
 
GOOD WORKMEN. USE OF BLUE LIAS. 305 
 
 The fame of the workmen employed at the Cobb of 
 Lyme induced the men of Hastings, A.D. 1595, to send for 
 a party of them to build a pier of huge rocks piled edgelong 
 without timber. (Queen Mary had caused these men to be 
 pressed for building Dover pier.) The next winter over- 
 threw this work. Another gang, with a master-workman, 
 was again sent for in 1597, when timber in cross dogs, 
 braces, and bars was used. The work was thirty feet high, 
 " bewtyfuU to behold, huge, invincible, and unremoveable in 
 judgment of all beholders," who contributed, as did the 
 whole shire, to the work. On All Saints' Day a storm upon 
 a spring tide scattered the whole. The entry in the archives 
 is full of advice to posterity, not to build without a mighty 
 frame of timber, the want of which caused the downfall. 
 
 Blue lias stone, now so valuable for burning into hydraulic 
 lime, resists very badly the effects of the weather, particu- 
 larly frost. Where so great an extent of ledges, dry at low 
 water, is found, it is not surprising that the quality of the 
 material differs in some degree. Some of the hardest and 
 most durable kind had doubtless been tried in our marine 
 works, but was not found to answer. 
 
 West of Lyme, near the present famous landslip of Dow- 
 lands and Bindon, are found boulders of green sandstone of 
 the greensand formation lower in the course of stratification 
 than the cockle or yellow sandstone previously spoken of. 
 These masses are locally called cow-stones, a translation of 
 Les vaches noires, by which similar masses are designated on 
 the coast of France, near Dives, from their supposed resem- 
 blance to Mack cows on the beach. 
 
 This material began to be used for the Cobb as a super- 
 structure upon the cockle rock foundation outside the oak 
 stumps that the " artes " or age had spared. The casing was 
 of cow-stone laid without mortar, and filled in with rubble. 
 When the work at any part became weak, or showed 
 symptoms of falling, it was taken down and rebuilt. Oak 
 wedges made out of the former outer defence often saved 
 the weak part from falling. Modern science explodes this 
 method of laying a foundation of rock not accurately squared 
 
 X 
 
306 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 off for a superstructure to rest on. The water flowing into 
 the masonry at the base often blows up the mass so imposed. 
 The masonry was, in technical phraseology, said to be " dry," 
 as no mortar was used. Agricultural lime from the white 
 and blue lias beds at Uplyme, one mile inland, was burnt 
 centuries ago with furze and frith; no architectural lime, 
 though the best material in the world was at hand, was 
 made. There was no coal brought into Dorset for burning 
 lime in any quantities. Lime was first burnt with fern in- 
 stead of wood by Mr. Timothy BurreU of Sussex, as recorded 
 by Dr. Ray, about the years 1680 or 1690. Cow-stone was 
 moderately durable. When squared, it assumed in time a 
 rounded form. 
 
 
 Cow-stone Casing resting on Rocks. Side View of a weatliered Cow-stone Wall. 
 
 This mode of construction was very faulty. It continued, 
 however, for some two centuries, when the outer pier having 
 been destroyed, the new mode was introduced. 
 
 Portland capstone casing of solid materials, well worked, 
 arises from a deep foundation, and is fiUed with solid masonry 
 of cow-stone. The blocks of Portland capstone (that above 
 the Portland stone of commerce for architectural purposes) 
 are worked to a fine joint, and are united by oak dove- 
 tails, and secured to the blocks below by ii-on bolts. Thus 
 the whole forms one solid mass. There are at intervals of a 
 few feet cross-courses of Portland stone. 
 
 Marine constructions such as this must necessarily be very 
 
MARINE CONSTKUCTIONS. — GEOUND-PLANS. 307 
 
 costly, compared with the expense of a dry wall of squared 
 cow-stone collected three miles to the westward, without any 
 payment having to be made for the latter, as there is a royal 
 charter granting the same. Notwithstanding, the economy 
 of the new method is much greater. Once built, the work 
 wiU remain, we may believe, for centuries, while the old 
 plan led to outlays every year, either in taking down parts 
 that threatened to fall, or which had been breached by the 
 sea. 
 
 The several ground-plans of so ancient a work " enforced 
 in the main sea," as a petition describes it, may prove in- 
 terestiag in connection with this account of marine architec- 
 ture, if for no other reasons, at least that it still exists, 
 whereas the fury of the elements has destroyed every other 
 similar work. (See the head of this article.) 
 
 irt^^ 
 
 A 
 
 Canynge's Mark. 
 
 The Subject extended to the transporting Rocks from the Shore 
 of West Dorset and E. Devon, by Means of Casks, Butts, 
 Vats, or Tuns. 
 
 So early as Queen Elizabeth's reign, in 1585, the men of 
 Lyme complain that they have to fetch the cockle rocks two 
 miles further than before, having used all that lay on the 
 shore near the Cobb ; and that all things were become dearer 
 than they used to be. 
 
 Doubtless great casks were used in very early reigns to 
 

 
 308 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 float home the rocks, and which are mentioned as the town 
 vatSj butts, casks, or tuns. 
 
 £ s. d. 
 Eich. Wright, Mayor of Lyme in 1617, charges for 24 
 
 butts and their charge in London - - - 6 16 
 
 Freight down - - - - -756 
 
 Item, of Mr. Evans of Exon for the great vats - 15 4 
 
 Mr. Eob. Bragg, mayor in 1619 enters thus : — 
 
 Paid for hammers and nails for mending the cobb casks 5 
 In 1643 one Minson bought 12 casks at Bristol - 6 4 6 
 
 London, Exeter, and Bristol supplied what we may pre- 
 sume no cooper in these parts was skUful enough to con- 
 struct. 
 
 Carts for drawing great stones to the sea-works were made 
 at Lyme in 1661 ; these would now be called stone-carriages. 
 The present carts would have been, at the before-mentioned 
 date, ca)ledi ploughs. 
 
 In 1663-4 Walter Tucker, mayor, enters : — 
 
 £ s. d 
 Paid for a boat to carry Capt. Alford and myself to the 
 west land to look after the workmen (there being no 
 cockle except at a distance) - - 3 
 
 Mr. Nath. Butler, mayor in 1690, received from Mr. 
 Courtenay, a townsman, who was building some wall 
 not of the old sea defences, for damage done to the 
 I town tuns lent him - - - 6 18 2 
 
 A few entries wUl throw light upon the subject : — 
 
 A.D. £ s. d. 
 1699. J. Morris and J. RendaU, coopers, for hoops and 
 
 work about the cobb tuns - - 2 5 6 
 
 1707. Saving the tuns in the great storm - - 2 4 
 
 1707-8. Nine men's laboiu' placing the great rock - 4 6 
 
 1709. Two coopers' notes about the tuns - - 9 14 
 
ENTEIE8. 309 
 
 1715. Lathy and Denning bringing a large rock by 
 agreement - - 
 
 Lathy and Seaward for bringing 43 bendings 
 of stones and rocks for the cobb, each bend- 
 ing being three carriages of four large 
 casks - . . . . 
 
 1729. Four new tuns .... 
 
 34 doz. hoops, and setting them 
 Cooperage - ... 
 
 2 men three days to put them into water 
 1769. J. Fudge and others for bringing 4 large rocks 
 at the Cobb gate, at 11. 7s. per rock 
 Chains for the tuns - - - 
 
 1769. Rich. Churchill Davie, the cooper, tuns and 
 
 trimming - - - - -1129 
 
 There are many entries about this date, amount- 
 ing to about - - - - 48 
 
 The rocks at the mouth of the river, to prevent the 
 channel from being deepened, were floated thither about this 
 date. 
 
 The corporation of Lyme found casks, boat, and chains. 
 The workmen charged by the bending of three carriages of 
 four large casks each at 20s. each bending. If forced to un- 
 bend by bad weather, they were allowed 6s. a bending. 
 Some rocks weighed from 7 to 10 tons. 
 
 £ 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 43 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 16 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 The bringing in of a Supply of Water into Towns ; the 
 Pitching and Paving of the Streets, with Details of the 
 Efforts made from the Reign of Henry VIII. to effect 
 Local Improvements in the above Particulars. 
 
 If it be true that Rome was not built in a day, it is equally 
 so that neither were the towns of this country expanded into 
 
 X 3 
 
310 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 their present growth and condition, replete with so many con- 
 veniences, without the fostering aid of time, thought, labour, 
 and development, sometimes slow, at other epochs more ac- 
 celerated, as circumstances favoured or not. 
 
 A needlewoman, upon the point of signing an agreement 
 to emigrate to some part of Australia, refused to go when she 
 found there were no shops. " She could not imagine a 
 place," she said, " without shops ; she could not bring it to 
 her mind." Can we realise the state of our country towns 
 before an era of improvements broke upon them ? "VVe think 
 not. 
 
 About the era of the Reformation came one of social de- 
 velopment, of progress which obscure country towns felt. 
 There were doubtless some remarkable exceptions. 
 
 The city of Worcester was first paved by Bishop Gilford, 
 as we learn, so early as the year 1281, which means that the 
 streets were pitched or laid with stone. Nearly three cen- 
 turies after that city had no foot pavement, as we now under- 
 stand the word ; for when Queen Elizabeth visited it the 
 soyles or unpaved ground in front of the houses were to be 
 gravelled beyond certain limits, and within those limits to be 
 paved. 
 
 Even the model city London, the metropolis, the empo- 
 rium, the residence of the Court, occasioned the first act in 
 the Statute Book for paving a highway between the Strand 
 Cross and Charing Cross, a.d. 1533, though the first general 
 statute did not pass tiU the year 1555. 
 
 The Act recites that the streets were " very foul, and full 
 of pits and sloughs, very perilous and noyous as well for the 
 king's subjects on horseback as on foot." When the sove- 
 reign went to Parliament, fagots were thrown into the ruts 
 in King's Street.* 
 
 How interesting to witness the well directed efforts of men 
 evidenced in distant and distinct movements ! Some latent 
 energy appears to have slumbered, and it breaks forth almost 
 simultaneously. Happily it is one of progress, as peaceful 
 intercourse must be. 
 
 * Timbs' Cur. of London. 
 
PITCHING AND PAVING. — NOVELTIES, 311 
 
 Of the towns of England feeling this movement, let us in- 
 stance that of Lyme. The mayoralty of John Hassard is 
 rendered memorable by the " Paving," i. e. pitching the 
 West Street, now known as Broad Street, and the " Get- 
 ting in of the Water." Paving in the modern acceptation, 
 then styled ''setting of broad stonys," was also had re- 
 course to. 
 
 The promoters of this useful measure caused the town to 
 be extended on the healthy slope of a hill, whereas before it 
 was confined to a comb or valley. This street and its ex- 
 tension forms the best part of Lyme. 
 
 The eflTect of some novel introductions may be problema- 
 tical, and require experience before we can pronounce de- 
 cidedly in their favour ; but the forebodings resorted to in 
 many other cases are truly of a nature to create a hearty 
 laugh at the habitual " prophets of ill." About the same 
 date umbrellas and smooth pavements at the sides of the 
 streets made their appearance. Some gentlemen abjured 
 both, and never availed themselves of either; they saw 
 what was decidedly effeminate in both these novelties. Men 
 whose feet were never tried by rough pitching must degene- 
 rate by becoming effeminated, they afiirmed, as would those 
 be who never got wet through ; so they in self protection 
 walked on the round rugged flint pitching, and streamed with 
 rain. 
 
 If cleanliness be next to godliness, we must rejoice that 
 some clever person pointed out how a supply of running 
 water might be procured, and this, too, where no funds existed 
 for a costly aqueduct or any similar work. 
 
 A small provincial town was to be blessed with a running 
 stream of water. And what did the inhabitants before this 
 improvement ? Let those who believe our ancestors could 
 have done very well without many of our modern introduc- 
 tions reflect upon the toil, the labour, the inconvenience that 
 all must have felt before the reign of Edward VI. The 
 townsmen of Lyme had to fetch water from a greater or less 
 distance. Some in the West Street, now Broad Street, had 
 
 X 4 
 
312 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 a right to go peaceably to an accustomable well, which one 
 William Long, in 1586, interrupted them in doing. Our an- 
 cestors in every part of the realm were badly supplied with 
 water. In their household expenses charges for fetching 
 water from a distance enter largely. In the household roU 
 of Eleanor, Countess of Leicester, a.d. 1265, appears an 
 entry for carrying water to the establishment when the 
 Countess was at Dover. In aqua deferenda ad opus comitisscB, 
 14rf.* 
 
 The conveying water by buckets or in pitchers from a 
 river or well a quarter or half a mile from the residence is a 
 laborious task. In the reign of Edward III. the inhabitants 
 of the city of York found it useful to employ Water-leders or 
 water carriers to bring them pure water from the Ouse and 
 other sources. So it was till recently at Shaftesbury in Dor- 
 setshire, and continues so in that semi-barbarious city 
 Madrid. 
 
 Leaden pipes conveyed spring water to London city from 
 Tyburn in 1236 ; and in 1285 the first great conduit of lead 
 was begun there. In 1442 Henry VI. granted to John 
 Hatherley, Mayor, license to take up 200 fother of lead. 
 The pipes from Highbury brought in the water in 1483. 
 We may learn how much was thought of this useful work by 
 the fact that the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and many wor- 
 shipful persons used to ride and view the conduit heads at 
 Tyburn; and after dinner there, somewhat different from 
 recent sportsmen, they hunted a fox. 
 
 The water-works at London Bridge were established in 
 1512, In 1534, two-fifteenths were granted by the Common 
 Council for defraying the expense of bringing water from 
 Hackney to Aldgate to a conduit. But Peter Morris did 
 not bring his supply of water to the highest parts of London 
 till the year 1569, and Sir Hugh Middleton's far-famed New 
 River was only rendered available in 1618, that is, a space of 
 sixty-eight years after the introduction of a stream of pure 
 
 See the Koll in the publication of the Camden Society. 
 
ESTABLISHMENT OF WATER-WORKS. 313 
 
 water Into the western parts of the town of Lyme in 
 Dorset. 
 
 Leland furnishes us with information respecting a memor- 
 able improvement in a country town some little time before 
 the date of our step forward in the right direction. 
 
 "Parson Edmundes (Dr. John Edmund inducted 1496) of late 
 dayes perceyving the great lak of water at Petworth, causid 
 chiefly a great spring, the hedde whereof is about a mile from 
 the tonne, to be brought in lede to Petworth, part of the water 
 cumming to the manor place, part to the parsonage, the residue 
 to ii or ill places yn the streate of the toune." * 
 
 In 1582 Peter Maurice, the German engineer, had a lease 
 granted him by the city of London of one arch at the north 
 end of the bridge as a place for fixing his engine to supply 
 the city with water. 
 
 The moTcment became almost universal. The want of a 
 good supply of fresh water caused Mr. Thomas Barfoote, 
 Mayor of Melcombe Regis, and the inhabitants, to write a 
 letter to Francis Howard and his lady to obtain their consent, 
 9th Sept. 1593. They desired to erect one conduit or more 
 in the common called "South Down," in their manor of 
 Sutton Poyntz. He and his lady permitted the same, and in 
 their letter styled it " a godly enterprise." 
 
 The town conduit was the great place for gossiping. 
 When many came for water, some had to wait, and the town 
 news was discussed. 
 
 A loose paper, headed " Getting in of the Water and Paving 
 the West Street, John Hassard, Mayor, 1550," contains a 
 list of the subscribers' names, and the sums given. These 
 vary from id. to 8?., the average of small contributions being 
 about 2*. 6c?. 
 
 The amount of subscriptions was 29Z. 2s. Ad, This was 
 IIZ. short of the expense, which came to 41/. 18s. \ld. 
 for the charge of getting in of the water from St. An- 
 drew's Well, and equalling or levelling of the street and 
 
 * Leland, edit. Hearne, vol. vi. p. 30. 
 
314 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 paving of the same, and also making of the gutters and 
 wall. 
 
 The items of charge were : — 
 
 Equalling of the street - - - 
 
 Wages, 6^d. a day, without meat 
 
 5^(1. a day for meat . . . 
 
 A labourer for his work altogether 
 
 A man and 2 horses, a day - - - 
 
 Two ploughs (i. e. carts) to carry away stones 
 
 Meat and drink besides 
 
 520 yards of paving (i. e. in modern language pitch- 
 ing), at l^d. - - - - 3 5 
 
 Setting of brode stonys {i. e. in modern language 
 paving), 2d. a yard. 
 
 8 
 6 
 
 A pair of pots, 2 panyers and 3 scoops - - 15 
 
 £ s. 
 2 
 
 d. 
 
 
 
 ■0 
 
 111 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 4 
 
 A sack of lime 
 
 it 
 
 Extended arrangements for promoting the comfort, 
 health, or luxury of mankind, are necessarily found to de- 
 mand more or less attention to obviate new and before un- 
 heard of, indeed never contemplated evils. 
 
 It was found at Lyme that a new officer was required, a 
 water bailiff. Robert Lerstock was appointed at a Court 
 of a Yiew of Frank Pledge, in 1596, to that office (pro- 
 bably there was one from the first) to make clean the 
 water-coxrrses and lakes for the pot water running into the 
 town. In 1769 there were two officials, one for the east, 
 the other for the west pot water. The former had been 
 presented for neglect of duty. 
 
 The water ran into the town by an open channel in the 
 middle of the street, above the town cistern, to the time of 
 some persons lately deceased. There was so little travel- 
 ling that the packhorses did not much foul the water. 
 
 Even as uncivilised man is not in a state to receive, be- 
 cause he does not comprehend, and therefore cannot appre- 
 ciate and benefit from liberty, which is to him only an 
 occasion for licentiousness, so it is with the advancing steps 
 
THE BENEFIT OF PURE WATER. 315 
 
 of civilisation. The proper use of the running water was 
 so little regarded by the filthy and lazy, that all would have 
 lost the benefits of the wholesome cleansing stream had not 
 authority stepped forward with powerful hand. We may 
 learn, from the history of the fresh water of towns, how 
 sad a picture would our communities present if there were 
 no ruling powers. The good, the pure, would be the vic- 
 tims of the impure and disorderly. 
 
 Before running water is mentioned as a blessing enjoyed 
 by the inhabitants of Leicester, the corporation were obliged 
 to order, a.d. 1467, that no woman do wash clothes or 
 other corruption in the common wells. 
 
 An order of the court of Lyme, a.d. 1608, has it, that 
 none do wash their books in the street under a penalty of 
 6*. 8d., a large sum for a poor person to pay. Thus was 
 the pure running water defiled by parties taking out their 
 books, or family linen requiring to be washed, into the street. 
 
 Sir John Falstaif pictures his position in a buck, or 
 book-basket, into which he was 
 
 " Eamm'd with foul shirts and smocks, socks, foul stockings, 
 and greasy napkins, that, Master Brook, there was the rankest 
 compound of villainous smells that ever offended nostril." 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, Act. iii. Scene vii. 
 
 Shakspeare again uses the words — 
 
 " She washes bucks here at home.'' 
 
 Henry VII., Act. iv. Scene x. ii. 
 
 The dipping places were called pills — perhaps a corrup- 
 tion of pools ; and the running water, the shute lake. 
 
 Widow Tilman was to no more wash her manikin in the 
 pot water, under a penalty of 3s. 4af. for each oflfence. This 
 woman with her manikin, or wool oven-brush, fouled all 
 the town water below her residence. 
 
 By Charles the Second's reign houses began to have pipes 
 conveyed into their interior. This was viewed with an 
 evil eye ; so much so, indeed, that the corporation was pre- 
 
316 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 sented at a court leet, iu 1682, for suffering so many water- 
 pipes to draw away the water, to the detriment of the ad- 
 jacent neighbours. 
 
 The whole of the town water was leased to James Hooper, 
 plumber, of Lyme, for one hundred years, at a yearly rent 
 of 10/., 28 Oct. 1706, who was to lay down pipes, and 
 supply the inhabitants at a reasonable rate, which is now 
 about 15s. each house. 
 
 Lest an investigation of the practices of antiquity should 
 lead to pride on national or local grounds, or as being mo- 
 derns, that we have shaken off the night that obscured the 
 past, an occasion is here taken to mention that these boasted 
 recent improvements are not all new. Sir H. Rawlinson 
 has deciphered an inscription upon a great slab found on 
 the banks of the Euphrates. Among other similar matters, 
 the introduction of water into Babylon, and such particulars 
 in detail, are recorded. The moderns have indeed been an- 
 ticipated. 
 
 The Paucity of many Articles of great Convenience in daily 
 
 Life. 
 
 The fascinating pictures of early convivial scenes like 
 many other vistas of the past, viewed through Time's tele- 
 scope, mislead the modern many. StiU they are true pic- 
 tures. Allowed ; but they are features of the past, taken 
 from kiags, dukes, and the powerful. The many gaze with 
 admiration, and apply in their mind's eye the splendour of 
 royal and lordly halls to the dwellings of the humbler classes 
 of burgesses and inhabitants of small country towns. Cloth 
 of gold and costly silks were early used, but not by the 
 middle classes, if there was really such a class. This topic 
 might be pursued to a great length. The utility would be 
 what ought to be the object of all inquiry — the elucidation 
 
COMPARISON OF THE PAST AND PKESENT. 317 
 
 of truth. Instead of pining and whining over the decline 
 of hospitality, the disuse of what are called the good old 
 customsj if we pursue the subject we shall discover how 
 comfortless the past was by comparison with the present; 
 that the days of Good Queen Bess were bonny for the 
 great, but miserable for the smaller folk. Many of our 
 notions of the past were erroneous. Present but the reality 
 and the delusion under which we have laboured becomes 
 manifest. 
 
 In the fancied good times a hundred little conveniences 
 were wanting, which are now indispensable. Treen trenchers 
 were not so good as pewter platters. These were scarce, 
 or Sir Lawrence, Vicar of Lyme, would not have left some 
 to be let out for the use of the poor. Simples had not the 
 efficacy of our mineral and foreign drugs, that attack dis- 
 ease at once in its strongholds, and soon obtain, if there be 
 not a speedy death, a joyful victory. But let reality be 
 our aim. Learn what value was once attached to what are 
 reckoned very common articles now-a-days. 
 
 An able antiquary has furnished additional confirmation of 
 these views.* 
 
 On the suppression of the order of the Temple in 1309, a 
 survey was taken of their houses, from which it appears that 
 at their chief mansion, the New Temple in London, the 
 brethren all slept in a common dormitory, the master only 
 having separate lodgings ; a state of things scarcely recon- 
 cilable with the statement of those writers, among whom Sir 
 Walter Scott is pre-eminent, who attribute great wealth and 
 luxury to the order. 
 
 The fact is, however, that it has been too much and too 
 long the custom to view the manners and habits of remote 
 times through a medium highly tinged with the results and 
 conveniences of modern life, and, therefore, they have been 
 seen under a false aspect; it is only by looking carefully 
 into the day schedules of the household effects of our remote 
 ancestors, and taking the number of their pots and pans, 
 
 * Architecture of the Middle Ages. 
 
318 SOCIAL HISTOET OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 their beds and tables, and other domestic goods, that we can 
 be enabled to judge how meanly they were lodged, and how 
 far from luxurious their daily mode of life must necessarily 
 have been. 
 
 Read the wiU of Isabel Fossyn, or Fauchin, of Lyme.* 
 It savours of another age. Who can dwell upon the legacies 
 therein recorded without feeling great interest in the several 
 particulars, and the articles so generously bequeathed ? 
 These things were regarded as treasures, and as such were 
 bequeathed to the beloved and the deserving. 
 
 fflaiill of Ssaiirl ^ogegn. 
 
 Archives of Lyme Eegis, 1508. 
 In dei noie, Amen. The 10th day of August, the yer of our 
 Lord, M. S. Vin., and yn the yere of Kynge Henry the VII. 
 23th Issabell Fossyn wydow of Lyme Eegis, yn the county of 
 Dorset, hold of mj'nde and fresse of memory, make my testament 
 yn thys maner : fyrste, y bygueve my socle to Almygthy God ; 
 my body to be byryd yn our lady chapell of Lyme forseyd ; also 
 y geve to the repacyone of the cathedrall churche of Sar, iiijrf. ; 
 and to the stoore of the church of Uplyme, vis. viiid. ; and to the 
 repacyon of the Cobbe of Lyme, y\s. viiit?. ; to my curat for my 
 forgetyng tethys, iis. ; also y will that the last wyU of John 
 Fossyn, my hoosband, be well and trwly pformed accordyng to 
 the teno and effecte of hys testament ; also y geve to Emott 
 Lewys of Axmynster my best blew gowne, an apron, and a 
 thredon kercheff ; to John Morook a brasyn pott f, a panne, a 
 payre of schetys, a bord cloth, xii yerdys of lyncloth, a lytyll 
 cofer, and xx*. ; also to Johaiie Crewe a vylett cortell, a vylett 
 tryppe goune, my best mantell, and a lytell federbedd if ; and y 
 
 * The last of the Fauchins resided in Guernsey, and has died within 
 the last twenty-five years. The property went to T. Andres, Esq., 
 whose heir was one of the jurats, now deceased. 
 
 ■f Kitchen utensils in a, former age were not only deemed worthy of 
 being bequeathed with all due solemnity, but were sometimes included 
 in royal inventories. The inventory of the jewels of Edward III. gives 
 11 list of his Majesty's frying pans, gridirons, spits, &c., as j patella ferri 
 pro friatura, iiij broch ferri magni. — Domestic Architecture, Paiker. 
 
 J There were very few beds or bedrooms either in town or country 
 houses. Beds were esteemed very valuable. 
 
DIMINUTIVE SCALE OF EARLY TIMES. 319 
 
 geve to the same Johiie and to the heyres of hyre body, lawfully 
 bygetyn, my burgage yn the which John Coppe now dwellyth yn 
 for ev^more. But for defaut of yssew of hyre body lawfully 
 bygetyn y give the forseyd burgage to the mayre of Lyme and 
 hys successors for ev^more to py for the soolys of John Fossyn 
 and IsabeU hys wyffe yn the frat^nie of ou lady of Lyme forseyd. 
 The resydew of all my goodys y geve to my ij sonnys Phylyppe 
 LyUyng and John Lylling, and make them my executors, that 
 they well and trwly pforme thes pmysses, and the remayne to 
 dispose to theyre mynde, part to them to lyve by, and parte for 
 the welth of my soole ; so all the lest (?) wey y wyU they kepe an 
 obett honestly yerly, w*yn the church of Lyme forseyd dwryg 
 
 vis. Yiiid.* vis. viiirf. 
 
 theyre lyvys, and I ordeyne John Borow, Willyaz Dare, and 
 
 iijs. iiijrf. 
 Willyaz Tyttbyry supvisors of thys my testament they to see 
 my laste wyll to be well and truly pformed, and to have for ther 
 labor as it ys entlynyd yn thys wrytyng on theyre heddys. 
 Wyttnys, John Borouth, notary public, Eic CleflFe, John Brit w* 
 Oder moo. 
 
 Inspect the archives of boroughs about the beginning of 
 the sixteenth century. On how small a scale was everything 
 conducted. How poor most men must have been. Everything 
 did not stand in due ratio to each other. The comparative 
 value of money has not been accurately assigned ; and though 
 many things were tolerable taken in reference to men and 
 manners of the time, much misery had to be endured in 
 various ways. 
 
 What has been remarked of the citing examples of 
 manners and living from lordly haUs will apply with equal 
 effect to boroughs and their civic splendour. For truthful 
 pictures we have drawn too much from London, Chester, 
 Bristol, and such eminently famous cities. 
 
 Turn we now to an annual accompt of a small borough. 
 
 * The merchant spoken of by Leland, who built the house in the 
 butter market, with a goodly tower at the entrance. 
 
£ s. 
 
 d. 
 
 9 3 
 
 oi 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 4 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 320 SOCIAL HISTOET OF THE SOUTHEKN COUNTIES. 
 
 The Accompt of Jonii Det, late Mayor of King's Lyme for 1549, 
 
 taken by Eoger Gael and, Aw Successor ( Town Accompt 
 
 Book.) 
 
 Received : 
 
 First received for the town rent . . - 
 
 Item, of the porters - - - - - 
 
 /-of John Gay for his standing in the shambles 
 ofBalston . - - - - 
 
 of White, 5s., Loome, 5«., Hodder, Qs. 8rf., 
 . Sprake, 6s. 8d., Woodcock, 5s. - - 1 8 4 
 
 Sum 
 
 Allowed : 
 First allowed for the mayor's fee 
 Item, steward's fee - - - - 
 
 recorder's fee - - - - 
 
 butler for the Exchequer 
 
 town clerk's fee 
 
 gathering of the town rent 
 
 Serjeant's fee - 
 
 keeping of the pound - - - 
 
 looking to the Cob - - - 
 
 Sum 
 
 For further illustration take a catalogue or list of the 
 Town Stuff of a borough. Many of the articles were 
 prized beyond any present value assigned to them. The 
 conveyance had been comparatively costly. 
 
 Town Accompt Book, 1550. 
 Here ensueth such stuff as Roger Garland, late Mayor of King's 
 Lyme, hath delyvered unto John Hassard, nowe Mayor there, 
 the Srd Day of November, in the Fourth Yere of the Reigne 
 of our Soveraigne Lord Edward the Sixth, by the Grace of 
 God of England, Fraunce, and Yrland, King, S^c. 
 
 First, iiij water bushels, three of theym with bands of yron and 
 
 oone with owte. 
 Item, oone strik and a yron to strick potts. 
 
 - 12 14 
 
 H 
 
 - 2 
 
 
 
 - 1 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 4 
 
 - 
 
 8 
 
 13 
 
 4 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 - 1 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 4 
 
 1 
 
 8 
 
 - 5 16 
 
 
 
TOWN STUFF, — ITEMS. 321 
 
 Item, a payer of balannce. 
 
 xxviij pound of brasen weighte and oone pound of small 
 
 weights, 
 xj pies of leden waights conteyning xxij. 
 a boke for assise of bread.* 
 two yrons to mark w' all. 
 the scale of the mayor's office, 
 two hookes of yron w'' chaynes. 
 a case of counters. 
 
 Stuff delyvered to Thorns Battyn and Nicholas Hassard, Receivers 
 for this yere following. 
 
 First, a crane, a shever of brasse w*" a pyn of yron. 
 
 Item, two shyvers of wood, and a cock of brasse, and yron pyn. 
 
 two pickesses. 
 
 iiij barres of yron. 
 
 two barowes. 
 
 a sledge of yron. 
 
 At the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, a.d. 1560, 
 the Town Stuff was iacreased by many articles : — 
 
 Item, two pecks of land measure. 
 
 two cabonets of Jersey measure. 
 
 three hanging locks for the prisons [padlock]. 
 
 a pynt pot of pewter. 
 
 three ale quarts of timber and iiij gillis. 
 
 a payor of Allmon rivets complete, j" 
 
 (6 bows, 2 black billis, 2 dagars. 
 
 Whistle of silver for Cobb ale, 2 barrels of gunpowder.) 
 
 A payor of Shereman's sheres that John Denyng did give. 
 
 a payor of manakells of yron. 
 
 Ten cartuches of canvas. 
 
 oone symyn of yron [symmyne]. 
 
 Additional articles in 1562 : — 
 Pair of corslets complete. 
 A great brooche [spit] of yron. J 
 
 * This book was used to contain entries of the price of bread fixed by 
 the Mayor at a sessions or assize. 
 
 I Almau ryvets ; a light kind of armour because riveted after the old 
 Almayne fashion. 
 
 I For the feasts then kept at Mayors' houses, or for the Cobb ale. 
 
 T 
 
322 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 It is not always easy to realise the state and extent of ac- 
 commodation our country towns afforded before the introduc- 
 tion of railways, and the making of roads as a substitute for 
 the narrow lanes which alone had been the channel of com- 
 munication. What advantages did not every one forego by 
 not having ready access and speedy communication with his 
 fellow man some leagues off? The division of labour was 
 not realised to any great extent. This cannot happen 
 except where the means of intercourse are cheap and rapid. 
 
 Orders for various articles might be sent to many cities, 
 but nothing would be returned. 
 
 When William of Wickham was building Windsor Castle, 
 Adam de Hartyngdon had the control of the works. He 
 was obliged to have aU the metal work executed on the spot, 
 and forges and furnaces were built for the smiths and plum- 
 bers. No supply of coal could be had in the metropolis, so 
 the king's master of the works bought a cargo at the pit's 
 mouth in Durham. * 
 
 Let us compare the executing work in Dorset in 1609, as 
 by an entry in the Lyme Cobb Accompt Book : — 
 
 Paid to Mr. Hill for iron, and delivered it to Guppy to make 
 nails for the Cobb boat, 9s. 6d. 
 
 Thus we learn that the blacksmith had to turn nailer for 
 the occasion, and we may infer what had to be repeated in 
 many branches of artificers' trades. Hence, what delay, ex- 
 pense, imperfection, and general inconvenience must have 
 been occasioned. We need not be surprised that the con- 
 veniences of life were few. A just and proper division of 
 labour did not then obtain. 
 
 While on the subject of a boat for the Cobb or harbour, let 
 us add that there was purchased, in 1617, 
 
 £ s. d. 
 A new town boat - 7 
 
 A cwt. of pitch to careen the same - 8 
 
 * Turner's Domestic Architecture. 
 
RESTRICTIONS. — OLD CUSTOMS. 323 
 
 These charges were greatly in advance of what would be 
 paid in the present day. 
 
 To the question, what was barbarism ? a reply was made : 
 A time when bows and arrows were hung up in men's houses, 
 and querns (or small hand-mills) were used, many hundreds 
 of years ago. These articles have, however, been retained at 
 a period much less remote. Bows and arrows were the 
 later. 
 
 At Castle Combe, so late as 1556, no tenants of the 
 manor were to keep in their houses any mill called quyrnez, 
 that is, querns, because they ought to grind at the lord's 
 mill under a forfeit of xxs.* 
 
 Thus, in the heart of our West of England, did old 
 customs and practices linger beyond the dawn of modern 
 civilisation. 
 
 Ships were small; carts and carriages rare; clothing 
 dear ; many vegetables unknown. The shops were open to 
 the streets, and not glazed; books were scarce, and very 
 dear. Hundreds of articles, each a great convenience, saving 
 of time, and promoters of elegance and neatness, had never 
 been heard of. The shank bones of sheep were formerly 
 used for skates. 
 
 Country shopkeepers not only keep large and miscellaneous 
 stocks of goods, but they can speedily procure anything 
 from the metropolis and other great towns at the price the 
 same articles sell for where they are made. So great was 
 the charge for conveyance before turnpike roads and rail- 
 roads that many articles were s©ld according to the distance 
 from their place of manufacture, and some were virtually 
 from the same cause excluded. Very many articles shop- 
 keepers did not keep; such were only to be procured as 
 fair time came round. 
 
 Iron wire was first drawn in the Forest of Dean about 
 the year 1565, and sail-cloth was not made in England 
 till about the year 1591. 
 
 Country houses were generally without ceilings. Plaster 
 
 * G. P. Scrope, Esq., M. P., History of Castle Combe. 
 
324 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 of Paris was brought to Southampton in the reign of 
 Edward III., but we may state it was only used for the 
 houses of the great. A ceiling with an ornament was a rare 
 thing in country towns in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. 
 The flooring of the upper story had its lower part white- 
 washed ; this is now hid by the ceiling. 
 
 Introduction of Luxuries. — Chimneys. — Pewter, Sfc. 
 
 The investigator of antiquity stumbles at every step upon 
 proofs of the great deficiency of the necessaries and con- 
 veniences of life in Tudor reigns. Articles now common 
 amongst the lowest cottagers were scarce to a degree, and 
 artificers must have been few in number, even taking into 
 account the small population. When John Mores, Mayor 
 of Lyme in 1562, resigned his office to Robert Davie, his 
 successor, that worthy handed over, among the few articles 
 that constituted the Town Stuff, — 
 
 Three ale quarts of tymber (! !) and 4 gills. 
 A pint pot of pewter. 
 
 The introduction of vessels of pewter in the place of 
 treene (i. e. wooden) ones, particularly platters and silver 
 and tin spoons as substitutes for wooden articles, is noticed 
 by the chronicler Holinshed as remarkable proofs of the 
 progress of what he calls " luxury." In the village where 
 he lived were old men dwelling, who remembered when 
 a man would hardly find four pieces of pewter in a good 
 farmer's house. The prices of things in Elizabeth's reign 
 were doubled. There began to be a vast influx of the 
 precious metals from Mexico and Peru. 
 
 While on the subject of pewter at this period, a curious 
 charitable bequest claims special attention. 
 
 Twenty-four pewter platters were given by Sir Lawrence, 
 
INTRODUCTION OF LUXURIES. 325 
 
 i. e. Mr. Lawrence, Vicar of Lyme, to be lent yearly for 
 the profit of the poor.* 
 
 This Sir Lawrence appears with EUesdon as patrons of 
 the living. We are not to understand that these platters 
 were lent to the poor who used wooden trenchers, but were 
 lent out perhaps for the Cohb Ale, a great feast, and other 
 feasts, and the money paid was appropriated to the use of 
 the poor. 
 
 A pewter platter taken in distress about this date was valued 
 at Is. ; a tynnen quart, lOrf. ; a square tynnen pot, 6d, 
 
 The time was not distant when (if not now) there was 
 the " Town Pewter," for the mayor's use and that of the 
 company, who, in the language of the chronicler, found 
 " the means to obtain or achieve such furniture as hereto- 
 fore has been impossible." 
 
 We learn from many sources how scanty were the articles 
 of domestic furniture, and how few of the appliances that 
 add to the convenience of mankind had been introduced. 
 On considering this we are ready to exclaim : — 
 
 " Sardanapalus had not then arrived 
 To teach what might in chamber-gear be done." 
 
 Pollock's Dante, Canto xv. 
 
 The conveniences of life are first named " luxuries ;" then, 
 when firmly established, " necessaries." So it was in the 
 time of " good Queen Bess." Many, like our good chroni- 
 cler, viewed the introduction of novelties with aversion. 
 He conversed with the old men, who remembered when 
 there were only about two or three chimneys in a town, 
 except in some religious house, manor place, or great par- 
 sonage. Each made a fire against the reredosse in the hall, 
 where he dressed his meat and dined. In a bird's-eye view 
 of the coast and towns in the Cotton Library, intended to 
 show where the beacons were placed at the time of the 
 expected coming of the Armada, towns, villages, forts, 
 
 * Town Accompt Book, p. 21. 
 
326 SOCIAL HISTOEY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 and castles are purely conventional. The houses of the 
 towns have no chimneys, but there is one house intended 
 to represent the manor, squire's house, or parsonage, which 
 has that novelty. The chimney marks the artist's idea of 
 a great house. The old men, sympathising with Holinshed, 
 went on to compare the great amendment in lodging. They 
 had slept fuU oft on straw paUettes covered only with a 
 sheet under coverlettes made of dog-swaine or hop harlots, 
 and a good round log under their heads instead of a bolster. 
 Pillows were thought meet only for women in childbed. 
 As for servants, if they had any sheet it was above them, to 
 keep them from the pricking straws that ran oft through the 
 canvas, and raised their hardened hides. The old men 
 bewailed the effects of the change. The introduction of 
 chimneys had brought rheums, catarrhs, and poses, while, 
 before pillows, heads did never ache ! The improved mode 
 of building had, according to their views, done much harm ; 
 for when houses were built of willow, the men were of 
 oak, and when oak began to be used then were the men of 
 willow. Thus will the enemies of improvement deceive 
 themselves in anticipations, and in the realities when the 
 changes have been effected. Stage coaches were to cause 
 the extinction of hackney horses; guano was to produce 
 universal disease, and when the cholera came it was attri- 
 buted to that fertiliser, though miles distant from where 
 any had been applied to the soU. 
 
 Should we omit, among luxuries, the sedan chairs intro- 
 duced by Sir Samuel Buncombe in 1634, and which were 
 used at once by the Duke of Buckingham, who has had the 
 credit of introducing them ? 
 
THE COBB ALE OF LYME REGIS. 327 
 
 The Cobb Ale of Lyme Regis. — The Puritan! s Triumph 
 over it. — Church Ales, ^c. 
 
 Mynstrellys had giftes of golde, 
 Eight full days this fest was holde. 
 
 The great festivity that claims this page could alone be- 
 long to Dorsetshire. No other county is known to have 
 had a harbour by the name of Cobb ; while that had two, 
 one at Swanage, the other at Lyme Regis, the only one re- 
 maining. Constructed during the reigns of the Plantagenets, 
 its name is no longer to be derived with certainty. Its im- 
 portance to the town and to the country at the back, in- 
 cluding portions of several counties, was very great. 
 The Ale requires some remarks, though it was no 
 
 " Marshalled feast 
 Served up in hall with sewers and seneschalls." 
 
 Par. Lost. 
 
 Scattered and unintelligible allusions to our great feast 
 had been met with. Till 1848 no records allowed me to 
 connect a narrative of this celebration, and I never con- 
 versed with an individual who had any knowledge or tra- 
 ditional account of- so important an affair. In many places 
 there are entries upon parish books, traditions well preserved, 
 and here and there slight remains of Church Ales, Whitsun 
 Ales, Clerk Ales, Leet Ales, Midsummer Ales, Lamb Ales, 
 Bride Ales, and Scot Ales. Those who have known some 
 obscure parish clerk " brew a peck o' malt " at Easter or 
 Whitsuntide, which he sold with an Easter cake or bun to 
 the mechanics of his vicinity, to enable them to keep the 
 season, which they are scrupulous to do, saw only a shadow 
 of an Ale. Such festive celebrations never survived the 
 death-blow dwelt by the Puritans. 
 
 Beer was for the morning and evening draught, before 
 tea was known ; ale furnished the festive board, not for aid 
 to a meal, but for indulgence. 
 
 An ale meant, four or five centuries ago, some good 
 
 v 4 
 
328 SOCIAL HISTORY OP THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 malt liquor, brewed to be drunk in good fellowship by- 
 neighbours of the same parish ; but as good drinking is said 
 to require good eating, so an ale came to mean a feast, — 
 a Church or Whitsun Ale, a Church or "Whitsun Feast. 
 
 There were Deinkings in Lent, to which private per- 
 sons and parishes contributed. There is much virtue in a 
 name ; though, like Whitsun Ales, these were allowed in 
 King James's Book of Sunday Sports, while there was a 
 canon against the drinkings. 
 
 These feasts were the prototypes of our great Cobb Ale. 
 Justice to the rude and more enlightened forefathers of our 
 hamlets and towns demands that the objects of the ancient 
 ales, when strictly such, and after they became occasions for 
 good eating as well as good drinking, should be explained. 
 
 Ales and fancy bazaars, or fancy-fairs, have precisely the 
 same object, however paradoxical this may appear. A good 
 end both had in view. This was the motive power. Now-a- 
 day a parish school is without a residence for the teachers ; an 
 organ is wanted, or there is some opportunity for the re- 
 spected middle classes and gentry to contribute to the fur- 
 thering of what is good, and the cause of good for future 
 years. While aU approve and are provided with means, 
 why do not all at once contribute ? The manners of the day 
 recoil from such a summary proceeding. The virtuous end 
 justifies, and custom sanctions, a more circuitous course, 
 while pleasure allies herself with innocent occupation, in- 
 dustry, and no little excitement. On some day of smiling 
 summer, articles more varied than ever ship's Manifest dis- 
 closed are exposed for sale. There is no public eating and 
 drinking, though much private hospitality. All are dressed 
 in their best. Waverers are fixed, introductions take place, 
 and bargains prove to have been made of more kinds than 
 one. In a word, the good end in view has been compassed 
 in a manner that the most rigid moralist cannot find fault 
 with. This picture represents the present manners and mode 
 of proceeding of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Let me now turn to an Ale, and entreat a charitable 
 perusal of early manners and customs, which " Time marks. 
 
ANCIENT WHITSUN ALES. 329 
 
 with change," so that a due allowance may be made for the 
 institution, and the possible perversion or abuses that may 
 have crept in. 
 
 The ancient church or Whitsun ales, like the recent 
 meetings of gay people just described, had a good object in 
 view. The repair of the church fabric, the occasional main- 
 taining of orphans, the benefit of the common fund for the 
 relief of the poor as at Castle Combe, &c.*, could have been 
 provided for by pecuniary assessment or individual contribu- 
 tion ; but such a method of proceeding yielded to one more 
 accordant with the spirit of the age. The end was approved 
 of; it was to be attained through the profits made out of 
 festivity. 
 
 Before church-rates were established, there were voluntary 
 assessments given of every man's good will towards the re- 
 pairs of the church. In 1568, at the church of the Holy 
 Trinity, Minories, London, 8/. 15s. 2d. were collected ; the 
 highest contribution was 21., the lowest Is. 6<f. f 
 
 The churchwardens brewed some ale, employing the most 
 skilful parishioner as the real operator. As the ale — soon 
 to become a feast — was annual, we must expect, as was the 
 case, to hear of " the church chyttel," i. e. kettle, " the parish 
 chettle or furnace," " the parish crock," and " the parish 
 panne " for brewing the drink. | 
 
 The apparatus now called the batterie de cuisine occasioned 
 entries in accounts of the church stuff. In 1603, at 
 Minchinhampton, the pewter for the church ale cost 26s. Qd. ; 
 the best pan, 24s. ; the two broches (spits) and the pair of 
 racks, 20s. 4(/. ; the furnace and the other pan, 55s. 3c?. ; 
 for the pot, xs. A form at the same time is charged xiirf. § 
 
 The church-house was mossed at Minchinhampton, in 
 
 * G. P. Scrope's History. The year 1490. 
 
 t Notes and Queries, No. 319. 
 
 I See Notes and Queries, Feb. 3. 1853, for mention of these in the 
 churchwardens' accounts at Chudleigh, and Is. 2d. for " the lone of the 
 parish panne." 
 
 § J. Bruce, Esq., Archseologia, vol. xxxv. p. 409. 
 
330 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 1611, at a cost of 12s. 8d. Perhaps there were no rushes, 
 or else moss was preferred. 
 
 At Tarring, near "Worthing, Sussex, the church ale was 
 holden without interruption from early times till the year 
 1548, the second year of the reign of Edward VI., when the 
 parish, having lost 7*. 6d. by that festival, it was laid aside 
 till 1559, when it regained its attractions, and was attended 
 with profit.* 
 
 In 1515, IL 7s. profit was made. 
 
 1525. Making 4 quarters of malt for the cheyrche was 
 
 charged 2s. 
 1534. Item, for Gode's goude for our bruying, Id. 
 
 Now the worthy parishioners began to eat as well as 
 drink : — 
 
 4 cawvys are charged 
 
 2 wethers ... 
 
 2i lams ... 
 
 In 1562 some worthies of Tarring feared, perhaps, that the 
 feast would not remunerate ; so we read : — 
 
 £ s. d. 
 1562. Received of devocion money to the ayU - 2 11 
 
 „ cheyrche ayll - - 11111 
 
 „ in weyt 2 quarters 1 bush., 1 peck. 
 
 „ in malt, 3 quarters 3 bushels. 
 
 The two last entries record presents or devotion. 
 There is added by the same authority t — 
 
 Charges laid out by the Wardens. 
 
 d. s. d. 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 13 
 
 9 
 
 4 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 7 
 
 Hoppes 
 
 - 4 
 
 1 capyn and 4 lovys of 
 
 
 Lygke of motton 
 
 - 4 
 
 breyd 
 
 2 
 
 2 Cawvys hedes 
 
 - 2 
 
 The cook, for his 
 
 
 Quarterne of peper - 
 
 - 10 
 
 wagys 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 * Topography of the Rape of Bramber, by the Rev. Edmund Cart- 
 wright, il. A. Fol Vol. ii. London, 1830. 
 t Ibid. 
 
CHARGES OF PARISH FESTIVITY. 331 
 
 £ s. d. s. d. 
 
 Nuns of cloys and Wm. Pott, for his 
 
 mays . - 8 wagys - - 2 
 
 Saufrone - - 2 Edward Stacy - 10 
 
 Half a motone - 2 4 3 women for their 
 
 Vinegyr - - 4 wages - - 1 
 
 5 bushel of malt - 6 8 The mynsterylles - 6 8 
 
 4 sheype - - 1 1 4 2 loydes of feyrs - 4 
 
 4 calvys - 1 5 7 The drome pleyr - 10 
 8 lams and one calf 
 
 more - - 1 9 
 
 At Broad Bluadon, in North Wilts, the Whitsun feast 
 gained 4/. 14s. profit.* 
 
 We have above full details of the cost of a rural parish 
 festivity drawn from the locality itself. Another author 
 states that two persons were chosen previously to the meet- 
 ing of the Whitsun or Church ale, to be lord and lady of the 
 ale, who dress as suitably as they can to the characters they 
 assume. A large empty barn, or some such building, was 
 provided for the lord's hall, and fitted up with seats to ac- 
 commodate the company.f 
 
 Here they assemble to dance and regale in the best manner 
 their circumstances and the place will afford ; and each young 
 fellow treats his girl with a ribbon or favour. The lord and 
 lady honour the hall with their presence, attended by the 
 steward, sword-bearer, purse-bearer, and mace-bearer, with 
 their several badges or ensigns of office. They have like- 
 wise a train-bearer or page, and a fool or jester, drest in a 
 party-coloured jacket, whose ribaldry and gesticulation con- 
 tribute not a little to the entertainment of some part of the 
 company. The lord's music, consisting of a pipe and tabor, 
 is employed to conduct the dance. J 
 
 No one was permitted at Castle Combe to brew so long as 
 any of the church ale remained unsold. § 
 
 * MS. in the possession of J. Y. Akerman, Esq. 
 
 f Douce. 
 
 I See the drawing of a Whitsun ale jug, Illustrated London News, 2nd 
 June, 1849. 
 
 § G. P. Scrope's History. See Carter's Specimens of Ancient Sculp- 
 ture. 
 
332 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 The ales certainly originated from the wakes. Elverton 
 and Okebrook, in Derbyshire, agreed to brew some ales, and 
 bound themselves to attend each other's ales. Every hus- 
 band and his wife were to pay twopence. 
 
 The festivities of a church ale were so associated with the 
 fabric itself, that several pieces of sculpture at Cirencester 
 and Chalk commemorate these merrymakings, in which 
 music held an important place. 
 
 Grotesque Figures from the Porch of Chalk Church, Kent, iltustratiag the merry scenes 
 of a Church Ale. 
 
 Philip Stubs thus breaks out, in moderate terms for him, 
 against this popular vice and immorality of the time : — 
 
 " In certain townes ! " (says he) " where drunken Bacchus 
 bears swaie against Christmass and Easter, Whitsunday, or 
 some other time, the church wardens, for so they call them, of 
 every parish, with the consent of the whole parish, provide half a 
 
CHUECH ALES. — THE POET " BANDOLPH." 333 
 
 score or twentie quarters of mault, whereof some they buy of the 
 church stocke, and some is given to them of the parishioners 
 themselves, every one conferring somewhat, according to his 
 ability ; which mault being made into very strong ale, or beer, 
 is set to sale, either in the church or in some other place assigned 
 to that purpose. Then, when this nippitatum, this huffe-cappe as 
 they call it, this nectar of life, is set abroach, well is he that can 
 get the soonest to it, and spends the most at it, for he is counted 
 the godliest man of all the rest, and most in God's favour, be- 
 cause it is spent upon his church forsoothe. If all be true which 
 they say, they bestow that money which is got thereby for the 
 repaire of their churches and chappels ; they buy bookes for the 
 service, cupps for the celebration of the sacrament, surplesses for 
 Sir John [i. e. the minister], and such other necessaries," &c. 
 
 A poet, referring to the Puritans, writes : — 
 
 " These teach that dancing is a Jezabel, 
 And Barley-break the ready way to hell ; 
 The Morrice idols, Whitsun ales, can be 
 But prophane relics of a jubilee. 
 These in a zeal t'expresse how much they do 
 The organs hate, have silenced bagpipes too ; 
 And harmless May-poles all are railed upon. 
 As if they were the towers of Babylon." 
 
 Eandolph. 
 
 The return of Whitsuntide and warm weather inspired 
 our countrymen in former times, and stimulated them to 
 festivity. They had escaped a cheerless, and then a coal-less 
 winter, without the comforts that disarm that season now-a- 
 day of its terrors. To the poor, winter was a season of 
 suffering, and to the rich it was one of denial, and often of 
 suffering. A consideration of the former state of things 
 must make us grateful. A consideration of this subject will 
 remove any surprise at the joyous welcome with which 
 summer was hailed. Each person was ready to exclaim with 
 the poet, — 
 
 " With greater light Heaven's temples opened shine ; 
 Morns smiling rise, evens blushing to decline, 
 
334 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Clouds dappled glister, boist'rous winds are calm. 
 Soft zephyrs do the fields with sighs embalm ; 
 In silent calms the sea hath hush'd his roars, 
 And with enamoured curls doth kiss the shores." 
 
 Drummond. 
 
 The purchase of a store of onions and carrots comprises 
 all the duties of a house-keeper at some fairs in October, in 
 lieu of what was formerly so important. The salting in, or 
 savins animal food or flesh, was undertaken at this time. 
 Much was covered with pig's lard, hence the word larder. 
 Fresh meat was taken leave of till the following April or 
 May, and salted food supplied its place. Indigestible and 
 unwholesome to some constitutions, scurvy and cutaneous 
 eruptions often relieved, says a writer*, while they gave 
 warning of a disordered state in the stomachs and the blood 
 of thousands of all ranks, nay, even of the opulent, because 
 their appetites were more gratified in quantity than by 
 quality. This made fresh vegetable food of great conse- 
 quence in Spring and early Summer, and much edible herb- 
 age bore the general name of salads; thus we find their 
 alterative value recited by Chaucer : — 
 
 " After that they went about 
 Gathering pleasant salads, which they made ete 
 For to refresh all grete, unkindly hete." 
 
 Frequent were the cases of attacks of great heat from the 
 effects of diet. Water-cress was cried about the streets as 
 
 " Fine spring water-grass, fit for lad or lass." 
 
 It is a famous anti-scorbutic. All such were once doubly 
 valuable when there were no turnips, and the severity of 
 winter had cut off all the cabbage tribe. 
 
 Cabbages had been first introduced out of Holland scarce 
 a hundred years, writes Evelyn, before his time by Sir 
 Anthony Ashley, of Wimborne, St. Giles's, in Dorsetshire, 
 
 * Dowden, " Walks after \\\iA Flowers.'' 
 
THE COBB ALE. — HARBOUK DUES. 335 
 
 who first planted them. They were introduced into Scot- 
 land by the soldiers of Cromwell. 
 
 After these preliminary remarks let us now consider the 
 Cobb Ale, the great festivity of Lyme, which probably 
 dates from the destruction of the harbour in the year 1376. 
 
 No accompts exist before the time of Henry VIII., in 
 which mention of it can be found. The first entries are 
 those of Thomas BUesdon, mayor, 1547, in this style : — 
 
 " Item, more I made of Cobb ale, Zl. 6«. 4rf." 
 
 All particulars of the festivity when it was only an ale, if 
 ever such, and not a feast, are wanting. 
 
 When bishops preached sermons and encouraged good 
 Christians to give at the church doors, to help maintain the 
 Cobb, we must view with complacency the institution by 
 which a fund was yearly raised for that express purpose. In 
 the Cobb, the weather-beaten mariner found safety ; and it 
 enabled a large tract of country to export and import mer- 
 chandise, when no other harbour within a great distance 
 existed. The dues in some of these ancient harbours con- 
 tinued what they were originally, though the price of every- 
 thing was so much raised, and the value of money kept de- 
 clining. The early dues had become inadequate to the 
 maintenance of this marine work. How preferable in every 
 way was the plan of a convivial meeting to support the 
 Cobb to that of England at large, adopted at this very 
 period for a precisely similar purpose. The harbours and 
 havens of England on the whole line of coast were out of 
 repair. The only mode adopted for procuring money for 
 their repair was by Lottery. The first on record in 
 England was drawn in 1569. The prizes were partly in 
 money, and partly in silver plate, and the profits went to the 
 harbours. There were 400,000 lots, the drawing of which 
 kept the people in a state of excitement for four months.* 
 
 The managers of the Lyme feast were dignified with the 
 title of " Wardens of the Cobb Ale." The mayor's accompt 
 
 * Characters and Chronicles of the Stock Exchange, by John Francis. 
 
336 SOCIAL HISTORY OP THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 book records, in 1555, the receipt of the sum, considerable at 
 that date, of 16Z. 15s. S^d., from Thomas Dare and Alex. 
 Davye, then officers with the above title. The practice was 
 to choose the wardens yearly at the Guildhall, then situated 
 in the Millhill or pit by the mill. Doubtless the choice fell 
 upon individuals who were not likely, by their mismanage- 
 ment, to mar the festive occasion. The proceeds of the Cobb 
 Ale were duly carried to account. "When money was 
 wanted in 1591 for renewing the fee farm from the Queen 
 by a new grant, Mr. Robert Hassard and Mr. Bydgood, who 
 had both served the office of mayor, lent for the purpose re- 
 spectively some 201. out of the Cobb Ale money, which was 
 repaid to the Cobb account. 
 
 "Would that some contemporary had described the gaiety of 
 the time. My labours in gleaning would have been spared. 
 
 The mayor for the time being was Lord of the Cobb Ale, 
 and in comely and befitting ornament was not wanting. 
 "William Barret, some time mayor, had generously contri- 
 buted to the dignity of the feast, by a present to the mayor 
 of a "Whistle with a Chain of Silver for this occasion. 
 The form of this is lost. John Holcombe, mayor in 
 1559, acknowledges the receipt of these articles in his 
 accompts, and sets them down as weighing eleven ounces. 
 Spanish and Portuguese officers on board the great Carracks 
 of this time are spoken of as wearing great whistles. The 
 rude elements probably no more required a shrill and 
 searching sound than did the din and uproar of so many 
 revellers in the Cobb Hall. Such was the name of the 
 hall appropriated to the feast, and we may fairly add to the 
 revels and the dancing. 
 
 " Merry it is in halle to hear the harpe 
 The minstrelles synge, the jogelours carpe." 
 
 An originator of jokes and witty dialogue was wanted to 
 enliven the feast where so many guests sat so long around 
 the festive board. None but large towns could keep a fool, 
 who, by the way, it need scarcely be said was no fool, but a 
 zany or merriman, whose business it was to prepare the jests 
 
FESTIVITIES. — DEMISE OF RICHARD BARRETT. 337 
 
 that seemed to come, as many must needs have done, im- 
 promptu. 
 
 Many a private individual may now be found, on the occa- 
 sion of great festive meetings, to set the tables in a roar by 
 the exercise of a wit that takes with all. Ever and anon 
 comes forth some ready joke that straightway produces the 
 desired eflFect, and without being conscious of it the witty 
 talker becomes a substitute for the mottled gentleman of 
 ancient times. 
 
 The musical department being in 1595 incomplete, Mr. 
 Vyney was paid for a basse home for the Cobbe (Ale), 
 Is. Gd. 
 
 " They had menstrelles of moche honours, 
 Fydelers, sytolyrs, and trompeters, 
 And else it were unright." 
 
 William Barrett's example was followed by Richard 
 Barrett, who demised to the mayor and burgesses, in 1579, 
 all that part of his house called the Cobb Kitchen in the 
 tenure of John Cogan, in the corner between John Davey's 
 house and the Cobb Hall there. The mayor and burgesses 
 were to hold and enjoy the same Cobb Kitchen, with the 
 commodities thereunto belonging, once every year at the 
 feast of Pentecost for and during the whole time, and so long 
 as the Cobb Ale and feast, for and to the Cobb use, shall 
 continue and endure, so it exceed not twenty days, paying 
 yearly 5s.* 
 
 From an "account of the charges of John Roze,"t the 
 
 * Wedding feasts lasted a fortnight. That of Miss Moore, at the 
 Blackfriars', London (Aichseol.), is a notable example. Of the immense 
 quantity of all kinds of victuals consumed, much was presented by friends, 
 such as swans, cygnets, &c. ; but this lady had been courted by Toby 
 Matthew, who became an archbishop. 
 
 Indenture in the archives between John Seward, mayor, and R. Bar- 
 rett, merchant. There was a Church House at Minchinhampton, where 
 the feast was holden. The profit to the church generally amounted to 
 from 3Z. to 51. per annum. After some occasional intermissions, the 
 church ale was finally discontinued from 1589. — J. Bruce, Esq. Archseol, 
 
 ■f John Roze complained against Mr. Robert Hassard of a misde- 
 
 Z 
 
338 SOCIAL HISTOKY OF THE SOUTHEKN COUNTIES. 
 
 receiver, " which I have (he writes) laid out for the Cobb 
 House the 9th April 1601," much is to be learned.* 
 
 s. d. 
 Paid for 4 potels of wine with a banket (banquet or dessert) 4 
 grinding of the malt, the sum of - - 9 
 
 a present sent unto Mr. Fugemes - - 2 2 
 
 [Here the practice of giving a sprat to catch a mackarel 
 is illustrated. Mr. Fugemes, in return for the pre- 
 sent of shrimps, fish, or conserves, gave 15s. J 
 4 hundred i of venison - - - - 10 6 
 
 [Was not this sum given to the gamekeepers or those 
 who brought the venison ?] 
 
 Deer stealing was so common at this date that all the 
 cooks' shops in London were supplied with stolen venison. 
 Great men doubtless sent this as a present. 
 
 Stivens to brew ....._ 
 
 2 ton of casks and the hooping - 1 
 
 A bushel i of wheat to brew - - . - 
 
 George Rocquey's wife 
 
 38 lbs. of hops, at 8rf. per pound - - - 1 
 
 Staigge to help to brew 
 
 88 bushels of malt, whereof 40 bushels were 8 gl. 2c?., 
 
 and the other 8 gl. amounteth - - 1 1 
 
 25 lb. of butter ... 
 
 This was a great dainty. Melted fat or lard was used 
 where we now use butter. 
 
 The crock to brew the ale [loan of it is presumed] - 2 
 
 meanour ia the Star Chamber. The latter was to clear himself, but he 
 compounded with Jolin Koze. 
 
 Robert Hassard had been suspended, and was a professed favourer and 
 upholder of John Geare, an unbeneficed preacher, who had been the cause 
 of great factions and divisions. 
 
 N. B. — J. Roze was mayor 1611. 
 
 * Loose foolscap sheet in the search of 1843 trampled upon on the 
 floor, and a duplicate half sheet. 
 
 The " Church House " is spoken of in the History of Castle Combe, 
 by W. P. Scrope, Esq., M.P. 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 7 
 
 6 
 
 6 
 
 6 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 11 
 
 18 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 3 
 
WOOD USED FOE COOKING. 339 
 
 £ s. d. 
 Spent at Waffort (Wayford, near Crewkerne^ in the 
 
 purchase of commodities - - - - 2 2 
 
 Shrimps and 21 chickens ... 66 
 
 Goode and Niscon that went to begging - - 4 
 
 [A begging. This begging through the neighbour- 
 ing towns and villages in London, and even at St. 
 Maloes, was systematic] 
 
 No shame is here expressed, any more than would be by- 
 one of a mendicant order who made begging an occupation 
 in due exercise of his duty. The ultimate object of the 
 feast, viz., the succour of the embayed and tempest-tost 
 mariner, was a noble one. 
 
 s. d. 
 \ hundred of faggots - - - - 4 2 
 
 Wood was burnt for cooking the viands. As yet no coal 
 was in use along our coast, still it was mostly applied to heat 
 furnaces. Its noxious vapours were firmly believed in ; so 
 no cooking, much less the delicacies of a great feast, were 
 exposed to the abominations of coal fire. 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 Calfshenge and other victuals - - 12 2 
 
 4 capons - - ■ - - 3 4 
 
 Richard Pamer - - - 13 
 
 George Eocquay [and his wife were the chief cooks] * 1 
 
 " At dressur also he shall stonde 
 And sett forth mete dressed with honde 
 Ye spicery and store with hym shall dwelle 
 And mony thynges also as I noght telle." 
 
 Lace for 7 doz. bread - - - 7 
 
 Candles, and for burch (wood) - 5 6 
 
 Wood and (obliterated) - - - 2 3 6 
 
 Lace for victuals that he did buy - 16 
 
 Clatey for cakes - • - - - 7 8 
 
 Wine - - ... 2 16 4 
 
 * There was a great brooche of iron (a spit) among the Town Stuff in 
 1562, handed by the mayor to his successor. 
 
 z 2 
 
340 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 2 Venice glasses and 8 other glasses - 
 
 One spong [see further en] . - - 
 
 12 Coupes (cups) and bacon - - - 
 
 Beef - - - - 
 
 Unto Smalling back again - . - 
 
 Unto Bery back again . . - 
 
 Paid at Burport (Bridport) when we went to bagging 
 
 John Piters for his cellar 
 
 Victuals - . - - - 
 
 A platter that was (stolen ?), and for vinegar - 
 
 Powder and for hiring of horses 
 
 [Powder for firing the town guns.] 
 Westover . - - . - 
 
 John Davy to brew in his brewhouse - 
 
 Sum 
 
 The warden, Mr. John Eoze, next accounts for his re- 
 ceipts, 12 June, 1601 : — 
 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 - 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 - 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 r 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 - 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 . 
 
 11 
 
 2 
 
 - 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 - 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 _ 
 
 8 
 
 6 
 
 - 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 £33 
 
 19 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 £ 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 Received of Mr. Fugemes - - - 
 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 » 
 
 When we went to Brancon (Branscombe) 
 and Beer and Colyton and Burport 
 
 
 
 
 
 (Bridport) - - . . 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 3J 
 
 Axminster .... 
 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 33 
 
 Charmuthe (Charmouth) - 
 
 
 7 
 
 1 
 
 J) 
 
 of the Handmaye (the " Handmaid, " a ves- 
 
 
 
 
 
 sel so named) - - - - 
 
 
 11 
 
 2 
 
 » 
 
 of those that went not with us at Wafibrt 
 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 » 
 
 of my wife and of George Rocquay's wife 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 3» 
 
 in Wisson (Winsham) in Axmue (Ax- 
 
 
 
 
 
 mouth) and other places 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 [The duplicate sheet had received of my 
 
 
 
 
 
 wife Bagg in Opplam (Uplyme), 2s. Qd.'] 
 
 
 
 
 )> 
 
 of the Londoners and of Mr. Brown 
 
 
 18 
 
 
 
 Received the Tusdaye . . . - 
 
 16 
 
 
 
 
 
 » 
 
 Wansdaye . . - . 
 
 6 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 )? 
 
 Thirsdaye .... 
 
 2 
 
 19 
 
 
 
 ?> 
 
 Frydaye .... 
 
 2 
 
 15 
 
 
 
 ?> 
 
 Saterdaye ... 
 
 1 
 
 10 
 
 
 
SPOONS, KNIVES, AND FOKKS. 
 
 341 
 s. d. 
 
 Keceived the Sundaye - - 8 16 
 
 Tusday - - - - 4 10 
 
 „ Fryday - - - 3 4 
 Received of Thomas Whee for a hogshead of beer, and 
 
 paid him for his spices, &c. - - - 17 
 
 Received of Tinscons and Colson by me, John Roze £ 55 19 1 
 
 We cannot learn how long the feasting or dinner lasted on 
 each day. There was in those ancient festivities no preci- 
 pitancy. Many hours, perhaps, saw no termination to the con- 
 sumption of the good cheer, which the enchantments of vocal 
 and instrumental music and jesting made to appear short. 
 
 A word or two about spoons, knives, and forks used at this 
 date. 
 
 Girdle Knife and Fork. 
 
 Common spoons were made of horn. Knives were im- 
 ported from St. Maloes in 1553, and cost from 2d, to 4rf. 
 each. They were first made in England in 1563. None are 
 referred to as being purchased or in use at this feast. Forks 
 are not mentioned. Silver forks came into fashion for in- 
 valids about the year 1680. Forks are said to be an Italian 
 invention. Old Tom Coryate, whatever kind it may have 
 been, introduced this " neatnesse " into Somersetshire about 
 the year 1600, and was therefrom called furcifer by his 
 friends. Alexander Barclay thus describes the previous 
 
 z 3 
 
342 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 English mode of eating, which sounds very ventaish, although 
 worse mannered : — 
 
 " If the dish be pleasant, eyther flesche or fische. 
 Ten hands at once swarm in the dishe." * 
 
 We ornament the knuckle of a ham with paper. This 
 used to be placed for cleanliness, as each person took it when 
 he helped himself. 
 
 In 1816, at the College of Valognes, in the department of 
 La Manche, Normandy, dinner was served without there 
 being any knives, except carving knives, placed at table. 
 There was a fork for each pupil. 
 
 A clasp knife was taken from the pocket of each person, 
 opened, and placed by his plate. After dinner many might 
 be seen inserting the blade in the ground to clean it. Salt, 
 in pieces about half the size of a pea, was served, and those 
 at table taking a portion rolled their tumbler upon it to 
 triturate it. Potatoes were such novelties that the cook did 
 not know how to cook them. 
 
 There is no charge for vegetables. The cabbage tribe, 
 some believe, was known early. How comes it that a 
 cabbage appears at the feet of the monumental effigy of Sir 
 Anthony Ashley, of Dorsetshire? Could his heir have 
 ordered a cabbage to be sculptured without its full signifi- 
 cance being intended ? We think not. 
 
 Cider is not mentioned. 
 
 Thus the simi cleared for the benefit of the Cobb was no 
 less than 2.01. Upon the duplicate half-sheet it is mentioned 
 that on Tuesday the sum of 16Z. was taken at the Cobb 
 House. The feast lasted eight days. The first day brought 
 the greatest income ; the following Sunday must have the 
 next day in gaiety. There was received at St. Maloes, 1/. ; 
 at Morlaix in Brittany, 17s. &d. ; a gilten spoon was charged 
 10^. ; the charger, 6?. 15 s. 
 
 The contributors to the ale at Morlaix, London, and other 
 places, were directly interested in the feast ; for the outlay 
 
 * Ford's Gatherings from Spain. 
 
INFLUENCE OF THE PURITANS. 
 
 343 
 
 upon the Cobb, which was for their safety and convenience, 
 depended in some degree upon the profits realised on the 
 occasion. 
 
 Andrew Davy and James Estmond, wardens of the Cobb 
 Ale, made a return, in 1604, of a profit of 16Z. 10s. 
 
 A Cavalier in Buff. 
 
 The Puritan party gained great influence at Lyme and in 
 many other corporations. The companies of players were 
 paid to go on to the next town without playing, for scenic 
 representations came to be treated as horrors. Eight days' 
 festivity, music, and mixed dancing, that is, the dancing to- 
 gether of the two sexes, must have raised a ferment. We 
 must expect that the Cobb Ale would be assailed. The re- 
 ligious feuds in the corporation had proceeded to a great 
 height in 1612; Mr. John Greare,the Vicar, having preached 
 puritanically, had his license withdrawn ; the Court had now 
 taken part against the Geneva doctrines. Mr. Geare, now 
 styled " an unbeneficed preacher " by his enemies, now pro- 
 
 z 4 
 
344 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 cured an act, i. e. a lawsuit against the major and his breth- 
 ren, and the Cobb wardens, i. e. the wardens of the Ale, for 
 the using of profane and religious abuses. He was favoured 
 by Robert Hassard, Gent. The opposite or Court party 
 agreed that the action should be defended at the Town 
 charge. They charged Mr. Robert Hassard with misde- 
 meanours wilfully committed in his mayoralty, and laid the 
 matter before the Star Chamber ; and he was accordingly 
 dismissed from his rule and place of magistrate. Some 
 honourable person interceded, and Robert Hassard was re- 
 stored, provided that he cleared himself by a judicial hearing 
 in the Star Chamber, which he neglected to do. For this, 
 and being a professed favourer of John Geare, he was ex- 
 pelled. John Viney was suspended for the latter cause, and 
 was deemed unworthy of his place till, by some worthy fruits 
 of his conformity and amendment, the Mayor, &c. be moved 
 to alter or change the order." 
 
 The attack upon our great feast began so early as 1610, 
 when the jury presented the constables for suffering unlawful 
 games to be played at Beaufront, as well the Sabbath day 
 as the week days. Such was the troubled state of the 
 borough a type of others, till the Puritan party gained the 
 ascendancy. 
 
 The Puritans were determined assailants. Thus writes 
 the enemy of them : — 
 
 " Rather than fail, they will defy 
 That which they love most tenderly. 
 Quarrel with minc'd pies, and disparage 
 Their best and dearest friend, plum-porridge- 
 Fat pig and goose itself oppose. 
 And blaspheme custard through the nose." 
 
 Butler's Hudibras. 
 
 Difference of opinion and religious animosity, in 1614, gave 
 occasion for an entry of an order to restrain those of the 
 corporation who probably carried on their wordy contentions 
 in as nervous a style as this municipal enactment displays : — 
 
 It is this day ordered, enacted, and agreed by the mayor. 
 
ORIGIN OF THE COBB ALE. 345 
 
 recorder, aud his brethren the capital burgesses, that if any- 
 one chosen into the said company shall break out into any 
 brawling, unusual, undecent, foul, lewd, or disgraceful 
 speeches, either by comparison, obrayding, disdayning, scorn- 
 ing, misnaming, or abusing one another, or otherwise misde- 
 meyne himself in proud, insolent, or scornful gesture or 
 fashion of behaviour not fitting for the civil government of 
 the place, he shall forfeit, for the first ofience, 6*. 8d. for the 
 poor; 2d oifence, 135. id.; 3d ofience, dismissal. 
 
 Richard Harvy, merchant, collector of the customs, was sworn 
 and admitted to the freedom of the town (gratis), and without 
 any fine only in regard he vouchsafed to take the warden- 
 ship of the Cobb Ale for the benefit of the Cobb upon him, 
 30th May, 1610, In this entry we may, perhaps, see proof of 
 the diflSculty that began to be felt in procuring a Warden of 
 the Ale. A reward, a distinction, had to be offered as an 
 inducement for him to take oflice. 
 
 To undertake the management of such a feast was no light 
 matter. It furnished subject matter for conversation the 
 rest of the years. 
 
 Documentary evidence is wanting as to the precise date 
 and the manner in which the celebration of the Cobb Ale 
 ceased. It had its origin from an early date, perhaps from 
 the first difficulties experienced in repairing the Cobb, and 
 was a noted feast. It was a great fact. Let us not glean 
 for little circumstances as to excesses or abuses. They 
 doubtless existed, for who can use the gauds of life at all 
 times in moderation ? The Whistle and the Chain are un- 
 known. The mayor sits unadorned on his bench, and is not 
 called upon in his year of office to be Lord of the Cobb Ale. 
 The cessation of so much annual jollity made many a towns- 
 man exclaim, in the words of the poet : — 
 
 " O days to be desired ! Age happy thrice 
 If you your heaven-sent good could duly prize ! 
 But we, half palsy -sick, think never right 
 Of what we hold, till it be from our sight. 
 Prize only summer's sweet and musk'd breath. 
 When armed winters threaten us with death : 
 
346 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 In pallid sickness do esteem of health. 
 And by sad poverty discern of wealth. 
 I see an age, when, after some few years 
 And revolutions of the slow paced spheres, 
 These days shall be 'bove other far esteemed, 
 And like Augustus' palmy reign be deem'd." 
 
 Detjmmond. 
 
 The Introduction of Coal into Domestic Use. — Wood Stealing, 
 Local Laws and Punishments of Pollers of Trees, Hedge- 
 tearers, Sfc. 
 
 " The grim ore 
 Is from its prison brought and sent abroad. 
 The frozen hours to cheer, to minister 
 To needful sustenance and polished arts." 
 
 Jago's Edge-hill. 
 
 However hard to be believed, yet true it is that when some 
 of our beautiftd fabrics, the cathedral churches, had been 
 completed, and our countrymen viewed them in their grand 
 proportion and finish, unscathed as they were by time's 
 rough hand, our southern population were ignorant of the 
 now common article Coal. Some knew no more of that 
 substance than the Spaniards living on the shores of the 
 Parana, who, having heard from one of our countrymen that 
 the British burned black earth for fuel, treated the statement 
 as a fiction. A naval captain of a steamer*, in his recent 
 ascent of that river, kindly furnished, by the present of a 
 basket of coal, a refutation of the calumny upon the English- 
 man. This was not the only case in which the internal 
 produce of our land deceived a stranger, if indeed he did not 
 purposely describe what he had witnessed in enigmatical 
 language. 
 
 (Eneas Silvius, who afterwards assumed the purple under 
 
 * Mackinnon. 
 
INTRODUCTION OF COAL. 347 
 
 the name of Pius the Second, visited this country about the 
 middle of the 15th century. He relates that he saw in 
 Scotland poor people in rags begging at the churches, and 
 receiving for alms pieces of stone, with which they went 
 away contented. This was pit Coal. The Germans call it 
 stein or stone coal. The two things were confounded. 
 
 To revert again to the use of coal away from the coal 
 field. The time at length arrived in England when for 
 certain purposes coal began to be used at some distance from 
 the coal field, for furnaces, owing to the increasing price of 
 wood; which smiths, brewers, and great consumers of fuel 
 felt. Towards the close of the 13th century, the metropolis 
 was supplied for the use of such trades from Newcastle ; 
 hence the name Sea Coal, because transported by sea, and to 
 distinguish it from another article called coal. There is a 
 street called Sea Coal Lane, by the Old Bailey, London. 
 
 One of the early uses of coal was for being dug into the 
 earth to serve as land-marks, or boundaries, the substance 
 being imperishable. 
 
 Coal, as an article of fuel for general purposes, was not 
 thought of. Its use was special. The opinion formed of it 
 as fuel was altogether unfavourable. An idea prevailed that 
 its fumes corrupted the air, and exerted an injurious effect 
 upon health. 
 
 For some purpose or another ten shillings' worth of coal 
 was consumed at the coronation of Edward II., which was 
 entered in the accounts as carboun de meer pris al paleys al 
 coronement. 
 
 In 1325 a vessel from Pontoise carried corn to Newcastle, 
 and took back coal. 
 
 At the mention of Newcastle and coal we might readily 
 suppose that no explanation was here necessary. The case, 
 however, is not so. The coal dug at the coal field by New- 
 castle formerly would not burn without wood, as the Nor- 
 thumberland House book shows, which proves that the 
 miners had not then found means to win the deep strata 
 known as the Main Coal. 
 
 The consumption of coal in London by the year 1306 
 
348 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COrNTIES. 
 
 was enough, it was deemed, to prove injurious ; so the king 
 was petitioned to stop the consumption of the noxious article 
 in the city. King Edward I., by royal proclamation, pro- 
 hibited the burning of coal under severe penalties. As 
 wood began to be scarce, the royal command was disregarded, 
 so that a commission was appointed for the purpose of ascer- 
 taining what persons used sea-coal, with power to punish by 
 fine for the first offence, and afterwards by the demolition of 
 the offending furnace. 
 
 Experience soon taught the great value of coal, and many 
 persisted in employing it. This occasioned the passing of a 
 law that made the burning of coal within the city to be a 
 capital offence. One man was actually executed in the reign 
 of Edward I. for the commission of this crime. 
 
 Lest it might be judged that it was only at a distance from 
 the coal countries that ideas of the injurious or even noxious 
 effects of the fumes of the fuel in question were entertained, 
 it should be known that so late as the year 1349, in the re- 
 ligious house at Whalley in the very neighbourhood of the 
 coal fields, peat and wood were alone employed. In the 
 reign of Edward III. two colliers are mentioned in the 
 archives of York, but the inference that they sold pit-coal is 
 not supported. 
 
 The good monks, like the ladies, believed their complexions 
 would be injured by entering a room where coal was burning. 
 "We need not wonder that persons would not eat meat which 
 had been roasted at a coal fire. They anticipated some in- 
 jury from so doing. 
 
 When the fire used to be lighted in the centre of the hall, 
 coal was not so fit for the place, before chimneys were intro- 
 duced, as wood.* 
 
 Coal. 
 
 Sir William Petty, who established Kenmare, co. Kerry, in 
 1670, found it a gainful speculation, when wood became 
 
 ♦ See the Quarterly Review, No. CXCI. 
 
SPECULATION OF WILLIAM PETTY. 349 
 
 dear in Sussex, to send iron ore to be smelted by means 
 of the oak and arbutus of that country ; thus spoiling 
 the picturesque, and confining the wolves to a narrower 
 range. 
 
 The "Weald, which means the wooded district, is a tract 
 extending from Kent to Hampshire, a distance of about 
 120 miles, by 30 miles in breadth. This, which the Romans 
 named Anderida Sylya, was, according to Asserius, a great 
 forest anterior to the conquest. 
 
 This weald, " Great Andradsweld " of Drayton, was the 
 great iron country — the region of furnaces, castings of 
 cannon of the earliest and improved pattern, all by means of 
 wood in the form of charcoal, when fossil coal was not only 
 not used, but was not judged to be ever available for iron 
 furnaces. 
 
 A husbandman was expelled the town of Rye, in 1591, 
 that place not being fit for such an artificer, the country all 
 round for miles being a forest. Hammer Wood, Cinder 
 Hill, Furnace Place, &c., are local names. The balustrades 
 of St. Paul's, which cost 11,000?., were from Sussex iron 
 works. 
 
 The first cannon was cast in Sussex in 1535. In after 
 years bonds were taken in 10007. from the owners of the 
 charcoal furnaces, that none should be sold tiU a license for 
 the sale or issue of the ordnance had been procured. Fears 
 were entertained that the enemy would purchase them. 
 
 Sir Anthony Shirley procured 100 pieces of cannon for the 
 King of Spain. He served that monarch, who granted him 
 a pension. There were two reasons for his engaging in this 
 affair. He obliged his employer, and benefited his father 
 Sir Thomas Shirley, a great manufacturer of iron in Sussex. 
 Thus was patriotism wont, as now-a^day, to wither under the 
 baneful shade of private interests. Enemies of our state can 
 at all times find sellers of saltpetre and arms. — Spanish iron 
 was largely used in the 14th century for the anchors of the 
 English navy. In 1336, lis. per cent, was paid for a great 
 
350 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 anchor, weighing 1100 lbs. when manufactured. The cost 
 was 6/. 6s. 6d* 
 
 Just as the western woollen manufacturing district has 
 furnished terms which have been transplanted to the north, 
 the cotton counties of recent fame, so the iron country of 
 former centuries, the Weald of Sussex, had terms in use 
 which are now no longer heard nor understood there, except 
 in the newer application of them instituted in the north, and 
 in respect of an entirely different substance.f 
 
 The coal or cole of Sussex and of the greater part of 
 England was Charcoal. A collier was one who burned wood 
 into charcoal. The coal wains of Sussex were the carts that 
 conveyed charcoal from the woods. Men were paid for 
 coaling, that is, burning wood for a store of charcoal. The 
 Rev. Giles Moore, in his diary, enters, " Luxford who coaled 
 for me 15 cord, of which I had 8 coal wains full of coals, of 
 which I sold to Thomas Young 3 loads for 21. lis. Od. I 
 paid Luxford for coaling the said pit 11. lis. 6d." Thus the 
 cost of burning fifteen cord of wood into charcoal is here re- 
 corded: the writer continues, " I had of Edward Snellfor 12 
 bushel of my coals laid up 3s." Smaller and bigger coals are 
 terms often met with in reference to smelting. The " musi- 
 cal small coal man " of the last century did not sell pit-coal 
 or sea-coal, but charcoal, faggots, and wood split up for 
 lighting fires. J A woodmonger was a seller of wood. 
 
 A full explanation of this part of the subject will prevent 
 much confusion and mistake in respect of the early mention 
 of coals, colliers, and such terms now in use for another 
 article. 
 
 Sussex was taxed annually at a considerable quantity of 
 coals, i. e. charcoal, which was sent to the king's palaces. 
 The king's purveyor, in 1615, demanded 400 loads for the fol- 
 lowing year, which was reduced to 250 bundles. In 1627 
 Lewes was assessed 58s. towards the provision of coal (char- 
 coal) for the king's household. 
 
 * Issue Roll, W. N". 579., Sussex Arch, 
 t Sussex Archseol. Coll. t Ibid. 
 
SCAECITY OF TIMBEE. 351 
 
 So early aa the year 1563 is an item of 40«. in the con- 
 stable's account of Lewes about preferring a bill for the pre- 
 servation of great timber. Wood was becoming scarce in 
 many parts, and the want of it, as there was no sea coal for 
 general use, was much felt. Tusser, like many other writers, 
 took occasion to complain of some great evils of his time. He 
 notes the reckless consumption of wood for fuel, and its im- 
 mediate bad consequences : — 
 
 " Some burneth a lode at a tyme in his hall, 
 Some never leave burning till burnt they have all, 
 Some, making of havock without any wit, 
 Make many poore soules without fier to sit." 
 
 The iron furnaces near the downs by Brighton had caused 
 timber and wood to be so scarce and dear that from 3s. Ad. 
 a ton it had risen to 13s. 4rf. ; from 2s. 6d. a load of wood to 
 7s. ; and from 6s. 8d. a load of coal, i. e. charcoal, to 14s. ; 
 from 2s. 6rf. the hundred billot or tale wood to 8s. ; and ship 
 board from 16s. the hundred to 50s. the hundred. 
 
 The Duke of Richmond has a pair of metal curfews to 
 cover a wood fire. 
 
 It is recorded that 12 acres of timber were worth in Sussex, 
 in 1223, 21. 13s. 4rf. per acre.* 
 
 Old Fuller felt the scarcity of wood to be a growing evil. 
 He was not one given to despair of the future, and writes, it 
 is to be hoped that a way be found out to char the sea-coal in 
 such a manner as to render it usefiil in the making of iron. 
 The great iron-masters of the United Kingdom will smile at 
 the hope here expressed. The years that have since elapsed 
 enable us very fully to confirm the sound sense of the same 
 writer contained in the following expression : — " All things 
 are not found out in one age, as if reserved for future discovery, 
 and that perchance may be easy for the next, which seems 
 impossible for this generation." Lord Dudley discovered 
 that coal was equally efficient as wood for the reduction of 
 iron ore, and procured a patent, which was allowed to stand 
 
 * Sussex Archseol. 
 
352 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 in 1623, when so many others were abolished. A deluded 
 mob destroyed his works. 
 
 Glass, owing to the quantity of charcoal easily to be pro- 
 cured in Sussex, was manufactured at Chidingford in the 
 reign of Henry VIII. In 1557 a poet writes : — 
 
 " As for glass makers, they be scant in this land ; 
 Yet one there is, as I do understand ; 
 And in Sussex now is his habitation, 
 At Chedingford he works of his habitation.* 
 
 James I. forbade the melting of glass with timber, or wood, 
 or fuel made of the same. 
 
 Drayton, in his " Polyolbion," puts a complaint into the 
 mouth of the Sussex forests, who personate the daughters of 
 the Weald district upon their altered condition and reduced 
 extent, owing to the iron works. 
 
 They bitterly exclaim : — 
 
 " These iron times breed none that mind posterity.'' 
 And in despair continue : — 
 
 " 'Tis but in vain to tell what we before have been. 
 Or changes of the world that we in time have seen ; 
 When not devising how to spend our wealth with waste, 
 We to the savage swine let fall our larding mast. 
 But now, alas ! ourselves we have not to sustain, 
 Nor can our tops suffice to shield our roots from rain ; 
 = Jove's oak, the warlike ash, vein'd elm, the softer beech, 
 Short hazel, maple plain, light asp, the bending wych, 
 Tough hoUy, and smooth birch, must altogether burn, 
 What should the builder serve supplies the forger's turn ; 
 When under public good base private gain takes hold, 
 And we, poor woful woods, to ruin lastly sold." 
 
 Song xvii. 
 
 The Romans found it necessary to restrain, by sumptuary 
 
 * T. Charnock's Breviary of Philosophy, quoted by Allen, Hist, of 
 Surrey and Sussex. 
 
POEESTS. — SEA-COAL. 353 
 
 laws, the expense of funerals and great consumption of wood 
 in burning the bodies of the dead. 
 
 When forests are properly managed, it is, writes Tego- 
 borski, sufficient for the wants of the country if they cover a 
 fifth part of the surface. 
 
 In Russia the woods exceed in extent the superficies of 
 the Austrian empire, and four times that of France. Still, as 
 the winters are long, the trees of slow growth, and the people 
 wasteful of fuel, a large proportion is wanted, and the empire 
 is in many districts insufiiciently wooded. So great is the 
 demand for wood fuel in the absence of coal ! 
 
 When was sea-coal or mineral coal first brought to the 
 ports of the south of England? — is a question which may 
 be asked. The solution of this has not been without diffi- 
 culty. 
 
 Though in a list of customs duties at Poole in Dorset, 
 A.D. 1341, "a quarter of coals" is set down as paying a 
 farthing (the same as was paid for a salmon), we are not to 
 suppose that sea coal is designated. James Blount, Lord 
 Mountjoy, had property at Poole, where he boiled alum in 
 1564. The fires were fed with turf, proving that sea-coal 
 was not in general use there at that date. 
 
 In a carefully drawn up table of rates of customs payable 
 at Lyme, dated 1490, there is no mention of such an article 
 as coal. 
 
 John Tudbold, a beneficent merchant of that town, in his 
 will dated A.D. 1548, gave his wood to the poor; but there 
 is nothing said about a fuel named coal. 
 
 Searching among the dusty Cobb accompt books of Lyme 
 Regis, there is found, that " The Grace of God " entered the 
 Cobb from Bristol with cole July 19, 1569, and her dues 
 amounted to 3s. 4rf. 
 
 There was at this time a vessel belonging to the port of 
 Poole*, of this name, of 50 tons burden. Her whole cargo was 
 not needed, so a part was delivered, as was customary, and 
 
 * Sydenham's Hist, of Poole. 
 A A 
 
354 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 the craft proceeded to some other port with the remainder of 
 this Welch pit coal. Soon after a vessel from Yarmouth 
 brought some chaldrons of north country pit-coals. The first 
 instance of a vessel being styled a collier is that of one which 
 on her voyage, laden with culm, a variety of Welch coal, 
 bound to Axmouth {i. e. Exmouth), was chased by Turkish 
 pirates in the channel. 
 
 The port of Yarmouth had great comparative importance 
 in the Tudor reigns. When the great plague raged there in 
 1579, the alderman and sheriffs of Newcastle forbad the in- 
 habitants to come thither for coals. Though this may have 
 interfered with some traders, such a refusal had not the 
 effects which a similar exclusion would create now-a-day. 
 
 But a great change was about to take place. In a descrip- 
 tion of England, in Holinshed's Chronicles, a.d. 1584, it 
 is stated that sea-coal " beginnith to grow from the forge 
 into the kitchen and the hall of most towns that lie about 
 the coast;" and that if the waste of wood continues, the dis- 
 credited mineral will be good merchandise, even in the city 
 of London. 
 
 It is a curious fact that coals were not used in any quan- 
 tity in localities near the coal field. It is recorded at Wor- 
 cester that the first barge load of coals was brought to that 
 city in 1570.* 
 
 In 1577, wood and money, no coal, were distributed 
 amongst the poor of Lyme, to the amount of 1/. 3s. 4(f. ; 280 
 facrsots, distributed in 1587, cost 13s. 4<f. 
 
 At this date the consumption of coal in the West of 
 England was very inconsiderable. It was, perhaps, only used 
 for furnaces, and not for domestic purposes generally. The 
 artful lime-burner plied his trade for years without using 
 coal. He required all his skill in order to thoroughly roast 
 his well-arranged mass. 
 
 Coal was destined to be used in greater quantities than it 
 had been. In the last year of Queen Elizabeth's reign we 
 
 * Stanley's Guide. 
 
IMPORTATION OF COAL. 355 
 
 find the grantee of the Lord High Admiral relinquishing his 
 claim to measure salt, grain, and coals in the Cobb of Lyme. 
 In 1644, the coal bushel was repaired ; and one Cook charges, 
 in 1645, for measuring 100 bushels of coal, 5s. 
 
 So late as the close of Charles II.'s reign, only 10,000 
 tons of iron were produced ; now, 1854, more than twelve 
 million tons. 350,000 tons of coal were brought to the me- 
 tropolis in Charles II.'s reign ; four million at the present 
 time.* The price of wood in the reign of Elizabeth must 
 have risen greatly. The east gate of Exeter having been 
 taken down in the year 1511, it was agreed to sell six acres 
 of the wood at Duryard, to meet the expense of rebuilding 
 the same. The sum realised was 281. f 
 
 The number of collieries worked in 1855 amounted to 
 2397. 
 
 The surprising collection of proclamations possessed by the 
 Eoyal Antiquarian Society furnishes the following prices of 
 fuel in London in the year 1632 : — 
 
 s. d. 
 
 A sack, 4 bushels, of the best old charcoals - - i ij 
 
 „ middle sort do. - - x 
 
 „ smallest do. - - viij 
 A sack containing 4 bushels of the best and largest 
 
 small coales . . . . - vi 
 
 1000 best Kentish billets of the true assize at the 
 
 water side ... xvi 
 
 Essex - - . . xviij 
 
 Western - - - - xiiij 
 
 Kentish faggots - - - vij 
 
 Essex >, - - - - vi 
 
 Western „ - - - - vi 
 
 There is nothing about sea-coal, but of the wares in which 
 the famous musical small-coal man dealt. This person, 
 Thomas Britton, dwelt in an obscure street, Aylesbury 
 Street, Clerkenwell, with a ladder to mount to his crowded 
 concert room. At his meetings Pepusch and Handel played 
 
 * Macaulay's Hist. f Archives of Exeter. 
 
 A A 2 
 
356 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 the harpsichord ; and the highest nobility and most elegant 
 ladies were but too happy to attend. The Earl of Morn- 
 ington was a visitor; his son became the great Duke of 
 Wellington. 
 
 By the year 1624 the coal trade had become of sufficient 
 importance to make it an object of attraction to the fraudu- 
 lent, who delight in new fields for their wickedness. A 
 proclamation was issued at this date to survey the sea-coals 
 of Newcastle, Sunderland, and Blythe, in order to prevent 
 the deceit and abuses arising from the mingling black earth, 
 slate, stone, and other unfueable stuff amongst the good 
 coals.* Sailors aboard of coal vessels bound to London were 
 not to be impressed into the navy, about 1665, — a proof that 
 coals were in demand. 
 
 Prejudices founded in error must always yield to increasing 
 intelligence. Our ancestors at length abandoned their fanciful 
 ideas about coal towards the beginning of the 17th century ; 
 and our neighbours on the other side of the channel adopted 
 and retained them to our day. 
 
 It is not more than a quarter of a century ago that an 
 ambassador at Paris issued cards for a large party, and found 
 to his dismay that only gentlemen attended, the ladies having 
 absented themselves on learning that his lordship warmed 
 his house by means of English coal. This may be paralleled 
 with the idea that potatoes would create leprosy. 
 
 Coal can now be fetched from the vessel's side by farmers 
 not too distant, and found to be cheaper than firing cut from 
 their own under cliffs. Wood is become very dear in France, 
 so that the poor of Normandy and Britany suffer greatly in 
 severe winters. Women take their work into the cowsheds 
 in order to partake of the warmth of the beasts. At Paris 
 the courts of justice, the theatres, and the cafes are crowded 
 by those who fly from a cold home, or a room warmed at a 
 great cost. Without economy, 25s. a week may be spent in 
 wood by the occupier of a sitting-room ! The late J. Stein, 
 Esq., of Chalmington House, Dorset, employed 500 Irish 
 
 * Proclamations, Society of Antiquaries, Feb. 16. 230. 
 
WOOD-STEALBES AND HEDGE-SPOILERS. 357 
 
 near Limerick, in digging peat for his distillery in that city ; 
 but he told the author that he could have purchased coals 
 with equal economy. The turning so many out of employ 
 restrained that gentleman. 
 
 Apropos of fuel. Nicholas de Yhonge, of Flanders, as- 
 tonished the citizens of York by his introduction of the 
 domestic bellows in the reign of Edward III. The bellows 
 of the Minster organ had been there probably from the time 
 of the Anglo-Saxons.* 
 
 The scarcity of fuel before coal began to be regularly 
 supplied to the inhabitants of the south-western parts was 
 severely felt. Warmth in an inclement season, and more 
 than that, fuel for culinary purposes, must have stimulated 
 the poor to sally out into the fields and supply in an illegal 
 manner their necessities. We are not to understand, in the 
 beautiful language of Goldsmith, that each woman went 
 
 " To pick her wintry fagot from the thorn.'' 
 
 There were the regular wood-stealers, hedge-tearers, or spoilers 
 of hedges, and to crown all, the pollers of trees. 
 
 Ranulph Hocket was appointed in 1578, besides his office 
 of piggerd, " to have and take all the wood from the hedge- 
 tearers that they shall bring into the Comb Street from over 
 Gosling's Bridge, and therewith to take their ropes and 
 hooks." Fifteen common wood-stealers and spoilers of 
 hedges were presented by name in 1597. The number is 
 sufficient to account for great devastation in the neighbour- 
 hood, and these trespassers and spoilers acted in defiance of 
 an order in the Court of Hustings' Book, Lyme, 1584, 
 p. 279., as follows : — 
 
 " Hedge tearing or breaking. — Persons found with wood to 
 have two days and one night in the dark house, and during that 
 time to have brown bread and water. 
 
 " Second offence. To be set in the stocks two days in the open 
 street, with the wood stolen before them, and one night in the 
 dark house, witli brown bread and water. 
 
 * Phil. Society of Yorkshire, 1855. 
 AA 3 
 
358 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 " Third offence. To be whipped about the town, as such per- 
 sons ought to be who commit peckery and petty larceny. 
 " Fourth offence." (Page torn out.) 
 
 It is a true remark that bye-laws had become practical 
 despotisms, whicb Bacon observes it was the endeavour and 
 policy of Henry VII. to keep within reasonable bounds.* 
 
 A precept fromtbe manor of Castle Combe in 1557, against 
 harbouring a bedge-tearer, proves that this habit prevailed 
 extensively. 
 
 Prseceptum est quod nullus infra dominium istud hospitat 
 Elenam Otes, neque aliam personam in dominiis suis quas 
 frangit sepes vel spoliat boscum sub poena foris faciendi 
 domino, xs. In the same manor, in 1586, it was ordered that 
 the tenants shall put away those under them that stelithe 
 wood, broke hedges, or are common scolders, under a penalty 
 of 6s. M. 
 
 The destructive effects of tree-polling were witnessed in 
 some parishes in South-east Devon at the decline of smuggling. 
 The " helps," that is, those who were hired to run a cargo, 
 being seldom employed, and not having given up night work 
 for honest labour, were poor and lawless. Many a good- 
 sized ash tree that figured in the landscape lost its poll or 
 head in the night, and the stump alone remained. 
 
 Security against Fire. — • Chimneys, Mantels, ^c. 
 
 Before civilisation attains a very high state of advance- 
 ment, some precautionary matters fall to the province of 
 individual members of a community. These are very apt to 
 be neglected. As it advances, these cares are removed from 
 individuals, and become the business of the State, the bo- 
 rough, or other authorities, who give their special attention 
 to them. 
 
 * Weale's Papers on Engineering. 
 
INSURANCE COMPANIES. 359 
 
 Who now troubles himself about the general security of 
 the buildings of a town against fire ? No one, except some 
 individual who may be either more fearful than his fellow- 
 townsmen, or has some special occasion of alarm, owing to 
 the well-known bad condition of the house of some careless 
 neighbour. The agents of the many excellent institutions, 
 the insurance companies against fire, examine the fabric of 
 each house offered for insurance, watch over the general 
 safety, and so relieve the community at large from what was 
 formerly every man's duty. So, when the sovereignty of 
 the law among our Anglo-Saxon brethren is established in 
 their once wild districts. Lynching, or the executing the laws 
 by private individuals, or society at large, ceases ; and judges 
 legally constituted assume the duties of their ofiice, and spare 
 quiet members of the community their often necessary and 
 harassing agitation. 
 
 Our page refers to the time when there were only two or 
 three chimneys in a town, and when these necessary parts of 
 a house began to be general. No insurance companies ex- 
 isted ; hence the care and scrutiny of individuals, who, either 
 as members of the jury, or by their information of jurymen, 
 caused precepts, and orders, and presentments about MANTELS, 
 dangerous mantels, &c., to be inserted so abundantly in our 
 Court of Hustings' Books. 
 
 A mantel, sometimes entered as camimis sive mantella, 
 mantella caminata, so often presented by our court leet and 
 other juries, was a projecting fire-place (hence mantel-piece) 
 which had sometimes a great deal of wood in it, while the 
 rest was mud or plaster. When this became ruinous from 
 neglect, there was great danger of fire ; and the houses 
 themselves, except the basement, were of wood and plaster. 
 Neighbours trembled, and acted upon their fears in a way 
 here deemed worthy of being set forth : — 
 
 " 3 Elizabeth, 1561, at Lyme. " It was commanded to John 
 Somer to amend his mantalle, payne of v shillings.'' 
 
 Around the spacious cupola, over the French and Italian 
 
 A A 4 
 
360 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 fire-placesj is a ledge to which are affixed pegs, on which the 
 postilions straightway proceeded to hang their wet cloaks to 
 dry. We call the stone or wooden shelf over our fire- 
 places mantel-pieces, or mantel-shelves t but we no longer hang 
 our mantles upon them to dry. In some of the old palaces 
 of Rome, the mantel-pieces are applied to the similar original 
 purpose.* 
 
 The hole to allow the escape of the smoke at the back of 
 the projecting fire-place was often so placed that there was 
 great danger. There is no end in some archives to the list 
 of " mantles presented." 
 
 Corporations made bye-laws for the general safety. Thus 
 at Marlborough, in 1577, runs one : — 
 
 " Whoso kindles fires in dangerous places, or without chimneys, 
 after warning given, shall forfeit 20s., or be imprisoned."| 
 
 In 1581, a chimney at Lyme being in a dangerous state 
 as to fire, the Court directed, — 
 
 "Item, that the tenants of George Hooper do make no more 
 fire in his house until the chimney be repaired, upon payment 
 of Ss." 
 
 The very next year a similar order was given to an in- 
 dividual, who perhaps, judging his premises to be secure, 
 and not dangerous, disregarded the mandate : — 
 
 "Eichard Bowden, of Lyme, was fined, in 1582, 4rf., and the next 
 law day, 6d., for making a fire before his chimney was repaired, 
 as ordered at the last court day." 
 
 The constables had directions in all the boroughs to observe 
 the state of the fire-places. By a bye-law at Castle Combe, 
 upon default pointed out, those who did not amend were to 
 pay xs.if In the same little borough, " no one was to enter 
 a stable or barn with a candle, under pain of xs. No one to 
 
 * azotes and Queries, Aug. 19. 1854. Signature, D. W. S. 
 
 t Waylen's Hist, of Marlborough, p. 119. 
 
 X Hist, of Castle Combe, by the Rt. Hon. Poulett Scrope. 
 
PEECAUTION8 AGAINST FIEE. 361 
 
 carry fire in the street unless protected from the violence of 
 the wind, under pain of xs." A lantern would have secured 
 the party requiring to be lighted from a fine. 
 
 Thus necessary was it deemed to exercise a strict discipline 
 in borough towns over the insecurity of buildings, and so 
 prevent a conflagration. The precise remedy was sometimes 
 defined. One townsman of Lyme, in 1581, received an 
 order that he " do plaister his mantell." In 1599, we 
 find, — 
 
 " Also it is precepted unto William Swain, that he doth plais- 
 ter his cockloft over the kitchen where he dwelleth, sub- 
 poena 10s." 
 
 With a view to good in the arrangement of domestic archi- 
 tecture, Silvester Jordan was precepted to alter the hanging 
 of his door before Robert Brooke's house, upon pain of 20s. 
 
 Private ovens are proverbially the cause of fire in farm 
 houses. Afocale or oven was presented as out of repair in 
 1582. I believe there was no public bakehouse in this reign. 
 In Penrith, a town of 7000 to 8000 Inhabitants, there was 
 no public baker in 1841, if there is one now. Rob. Holden, 
 who had a public bakehouse at Lyme in 1669, was presented 
 at the court leet to amend his dangerous oven where Ed- 
 ward Staple lives, to the endangering the setting the town 
 on fire. 
 
 Londoners, as a precaution against fire, were compelled to 
 whitewash the thatches of their houses.* 
 
 There are towns in which the bye-laws positively forbad, 
 two centuries ago, the use of thatch for new houses. Thus 
 at Marlborough, In 1622, no house was to be built without 
 being covered with tile or slate.f 
 
 In Norwich, a fine of 51. was received in 1640 for havinar 
 covered a house with reed. The walls round the pest- 
 house were buUt with the money, f At Castle Combe, in 
 1674, no customary tenant to remove tiles and replace with 
 thatch, under pain of 39s. lie?. 
 
 * Turner's Domestic Architecture. f Waylen's Ilist. of M. 
 
 t Blomefleld's Norfolk. 
 
362 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 The whole mass of borough legislation respecting fire- 
 places or mantels, ovens, &c., is rendered useless by the 
 establishment of fire insurances, and the operation of their 
 rules. 
 
 A brief mention of a practice not altogether foreign to 
 the subject may, perhaps, be excused. 
 
 At Douglas, in the Isle of Man, there is a simultaneous 
 burning out of the chimneys of the town after a fall of 
 rain. A gentleman writes, in May 1852, from Douglas, 
 that a stranger would think the town was in flames, while 
 it was only the clearing off the accumulated soot. 
 
 Steven Kent, of Pimperne, blacksmith, was presented in 
 1631 for an improper use of his forge, by which there was 
 danger of a firing his neighbours' houses. Nothing was 
 said about a chimney ; so we may fairly conclude his forge 
 had not that useful, and, for safety, necessary appendage. 
 The complaint states that Kent made fires, not only for 
 the use of his trade, which would have been safe, but also 
 for the dressing his necessaries for his family, and for wash- 
 ing, -and such like businesses. Whereby the inhabitants of 
 that parish have been often endangered to have their houses 
 set on fire by the use of frith and wood for the fire in an 
 improper place, without any, or else an insufiicient chimney. 
 The Court ordered that Kent should be bound over to 
 answer for the same at the next sessions, and directs " that 
 he shall not make any fire in time to come in the said forge, 
 save only with sea-coal, and that for the necessary use of 
 his trade only, or be committed to the county gaol if he do 
 not obey this order." 
 
 Before these sessions were over, the Court was applied to 
 against widow Gay, of Wimborne Minster, dwelling in the 
 heart and middle of that town. Her case is a good specimen 
 of the evils of early times, and a great drawback to the 
 comfort and safety of the neighbourhood it must have 
 been. 
 
 Widow Gaye, in the heart of Wimborne, carried on a 
 very thriving trade as a tipler, and brewed her own beer 
 and ale. The situation probably required a draft, and a 
 
MISEEY PRODUCED BY FIRES. 363 
 
 somewhat elevated exit for the smoke ; so Widow Gaye 
 had erected a FLUE, or chimney of timber, as others in 
 so many instances had mantels of wood. This, or some 
 part of the said house, by the nature of its construction 
 and materials, had taken fire, and very likely to have ad- 
 ventured the whole town. Widow Gaye was to be pre- 
 vented from henceforth selling beer or ale, or from tipling 
 or brewing in the said house; and the constables of the 
 town of Wimborne were to bring her before some justice 
 of the peace, to give bond not to tipple any more, nor to 
 brew for her own use in the said flue, until it be amended 
 and adjudged by the constables to be sufficient for her own 
 use.* 
 
 Before Fire Insurance was known and practised, great 
 fires produced much misery. Grants were wont to be made 
 from the county purse in relief of the sufferers. 
 
 Five sufferers from a fire at Wimborne Minster, in 1634, 
 petitioned the magistrates, who granted a sum of ten pounds, 
 to be divided among the parties as Sir Walter Erie, Knight, 
 and Thomas Hooper, Esq., should think fit. 
 
 A far heavier calamity called forth the sympathy of the 
 Court shortly afterwards. A fire broke out at Bere Regis, 
 which in the space of four hours consumed houses and corn 
 to the value of 7,000/., leaving 306 persons utterly destitute. 
 The sum of 50/. was granted from the county fund, and the 
 justices authenticated the facts set forth in a petition to the 
 King, praying him to grant letters for a general collection 
 in aid of the town.f 
 
 The Phoenix was the first fire office established, in 1682. 
 There were used in towns squirts, or syringes for extin- 
 guishing fire, which did not exceed two or three feet in 
 length. These yielded to the Fire Engine, with leathern 
 pipes, which was patented in 1676. Water-tight, seamless 
 hose was made in Bethnal Green about 1720. About this 
 date — 
 
 * JMr. T. Hearn, Qui Quondam. f IbiJ. 
 
364 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 A fire engine and pipe for Lyme cost - - 6 
 
 A square pipe, 23 feet long - - - - 1 18 
 
 12 leather fire buckets - - . - 2 3 3 
 
 A Fire Engine was considered an appropriate present 
 for an aspirant to a borough. At Lewes, in 1726, T. Pel- 
 ham, Esq., gave one, and having been chosen representative 
 in 1731, he presented a second. 
 
 The Clothing Trade of the West of England, — a kind of 
 Clothiers' Parliament. 
 
 The West of England was once a manufacturing district, 
 — the seat of the clothing trade. It is generally supposed 
 that some great natural advantage determines the choice 
 of locality for such matters. The contiguity of coal, iron, 
 &c. is presumed to be the leading motive in such a choice 
 at present. In former centuries this had little to do with 
 the clothing trade. The factory system had not been intro- 
 duced, and the matter was conducted on a very simple plan. 
 
 A farmer's partner — the goodman's wife, or goodwife — 
 kept servant maids for the kine, no more than for a depart- 
 ment of the clothing business. The wool was washed and 
 dried by these, then spun with a distaff, the old accompani- 
 ment of a rustic building. The woollen thread was now an 
 article for market, where the clothiers held a divided sway 
 with the growers of produce for human food. 
 
 Parties bought woollen thread, and employed weavers to 
 weave the same into cloth at their own shops, outhouses, or 
 places that would receive a loom, in bye corners of lanes 
 and backlets. 
 
 This work done, the employer of the weavers, who per- 
 haps kept many at work, had for sale pieces of undyed and 
 undressed cloth. 
 
THE CLOTHING TRADE. — WEAVERS. 365 
 
 Let it be distinctly understood, that no buildings existed 
 of any size where many processes were carried on by one 
 party or firm. 
 
 The pieces of undyed and undressed cloth were now sent 
 to foreigners, principally the Flemings, who finished them 
 off, realising a profit of 500,0007. a-year by so doing. The 
 pieces of finished cloth were then exported for sale in 
 Spain and Portugal by the Flemings, or Dutch, who had 
 purchased them to finish them off, and were then sold as 
 Flemish bays. The Norman peasantry wore our kerseys. 
 
 Alderman Cockayne practised an art which he had learnt 
 or invented — that of dyeing and dressing cloths. James I. 
 granted, in the year 1608, this improver an exclusive right 
 to dye and dress cloths, and prohibited the exportation of 
 undyed cloths. This called into action the States of Hol- 
 land and the German cities, which prohibited the importa- 
 tion of English-dyed cloths. As the cloth finished in 
 Holland was better and cheaper than Alderman Cock- 
 ayne's, he could only sell his at home, where the patent 
 proved so offensive that it was annulled in 1615. 
 
 English clothiers adopted a new method, that of dyeing 
 the wool before weaving it. A Dutchman taught how a fine 
 scarlet dye might be procured about 1635, when the art of 
 fixing colours produced from logwood was also acquired, and 
 the act for prohibiting the use of logwood was repealed in 
 1660. The brilliant and permanent scarlet dye, for which 
 the waters of Chalford, in Gloucestershire, became celebrated 
 even to China, was a great discovery. 
 
 The early legislators had great dislike to dealers purchas- 
 ing wool who were not going to make it up into cloth. They 
 would have no wool staplers about 1464. 
 
 A weaver who did not return cloth of honest weight, ac- 
 cording to the wool given out to him, was set in the pUlory 
 or cucking-stool. 3 Henry VIII. c. b. 
 
 A law of 1551 provided that all weavers of broad cloth 
 should serve an apprenticeship of seven years. 
 
 The nomenclature of our early trade may not be known to 
 many. The names familiar to the initiated are given ; but 
 
366 
 
 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 no description of the several properties or qualities of each is 
 attempted, from want of information. There were serges, 
 broadcloths, Medley and Dorset kerseys, Dorsetshire dozens, 
 single bays, Bristol, Bridgwater, and Taunton cottons, a 
 woollen article that gave a name to a very important sub- 
 stance and manufacture that has sprung into notice with a 
 world-wide fame. 
 
 There were weavers, walkers, fullers, fulling-mill men, 
 shearmen, dyers, forcers of wool, carders and sorters of wool, 
 and spinners ; carders and spullars of yarn. 
 
 In addition to colours now in general use, such as scarlet 
 and blue, there were others designated as tawny, russetj 
 marble grey, puke or dark grey, sadnew colour, asewer, 
 watchett, sheep's colour, lion colour, motley or iron grey, 
 friar's grey, crane colour, and old medley colour.* 
 
 In 1621 the price of everything except corn was at a very 
 low rate. The poor tradesmen of the western parts, that is, 
 men of the trade of the country, which was clothing, could 
 find but little work, so that many offered to work for meat 
 and drink only. The merchants who bought of the weavers 
 could not dispose of the cloths they had purchased.f 
 
 In Exeter, the centre of the manufacturing trade, there 
 were 300 poor weavers about the streets craving relief by 
 begging. The justices met at the Assizes, 12th of March, 
 to consider of some course for finding work for the poor 
 men, and to prevent an insurrection. 
 
 In London the merchants, for so those who bought and 
 dealt in cloth were styled, were enjoined to buy a quantity of 
 cloths weekly at Blackwell Hall. Legislation affecting one 
 class was adopted instead of a course that might have 
 remedied the evil, or allowed it to fall more equally. It is 
 stated as a penal condition, that if they did not buy as directed 
 they should be disfranchised of their liberties and freedom as 
 (cloth) merchants in London. 
 
 In 1622 the sheriffs in the west were directed to call 
 
 * See Statute 4 & 5 Phi], and Mary, c. 5. 
 
 t Purchased as a market house for cloth in 1397. 
 
DEADNESS OP TEADE. INQUIBIES. 367 
 
 before them all clothiers, out of which two of the most 
 efficient of every county were 'to be sent to London before 
 certain commissioners appointed to inquire into the cause of 
 the deadness of trade, and to settle a course to revive the 
 trade of clothing beyond the seas ; which two clothiers so 
 sent should deliver their opinions of the causes and reasons 
 of the deadness of trade before the said commissioners, so 
 that some course may be taken for some redress therein.* 
 
 The High Sheriff of Dorset called the clothiers together, 
 who selected John Gardner and Richard Downe, two of 
 their calling, to journey to London as their representatives. 
 These two champions of the clotliiers experienced a pitiful, 
 but too customary a fate. Their services having been ren- 
 dered, and the manner of performing them never having been 
 questioned, oblivion stole over the minds of the many who 
 had stimulated them to aspire to the honour and ride to this 
 quasi-paxliaxaent. 
 
 In this employment they made two journeys to London, 
 and spent above two months in the prosecution of the business 
 to their great charge, travail, hindrance, and expense, amount- 
 ing to one hundred marks, and were robbed on their return 
 homewards. 
 
 It had been promised by the other clothiers that their 
 charges and expenses should be repaid, and that they should 
 be fully satisfied ; but after four years they had received no 
 recompense, nor a penny of contribution for their expense 
 and loss. Hereupon they petitioned the Honourable Privy 
 Council, who referred the matter to the magistrates at the 
 Dorset sessions. These thought fit, and ordered John 
 Gould the elder, Richard Blachford, Dennis Bond, and 
 Joseph Pratie, all of Dorchester, being four clothiers of that 
 county, to call before them all such clothiers as they con- 
 ceive are liable to the contribution in question, and to make 
 an equal and indifferent rate for raising the sum required.! 
 
 The commissioners appointed to inquire were to consider 
 
 * Yonge, Diary. 
 
 t Mr. T. Hearn, Qui Quondam. 
 
368 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 if it were not behoveful to put in execution the laws still in 
 force, which obliged merchant strangers to lay out the pro- 
 ceeds of the merchandise imported by them on the native 
 commodities of the realm. 
 
 The merchants of that great manufacturing city, Exeter, 
 exported tiU the latter part of the 18th century serges and 
 cloths to Italy. 
 
 Before the factory system was Introduced, which anni- 
 hilated the former mode of cloth-making, the little towns of 
 DcYon had busy markets and fairs. There was a bustle at 
 the times when these were held, and the clack of the weaver's 
 shuttle was heard in all directions. The next generation 
 that had the large factory building, the water-wheel at work, 
 and capital employed, saw the unequal contest with the 
 North of England, to which our cloth trade has nearly all 
 passed, Frome, &c. being exceptions. 
 
 " A walker " in the time of Edward III. meant a fuller. 
 The fulling of cloth was performed by walking over it, as is 
 now practised in the remote Isle of Sky. 
 
 The treasurers for the county of Dorset had been, before 
 the year 1632, either Knights or Esquires. The rule was 
 broken through at this epoch, and worthies of the cloth trade, 
 &c. were elected. Israel Sherley, of Blandford Forum, 
 woollendraper, and Josias Cuth, of Sherborne, linendraper, 
 were the next year succeeded by John Hill, of Dorchester, 
 merchant, and Eichard Ryves, of Shaftesbury, merchant. 
 
 It Is important to have one class emerging from an inferior 
 position to a higher grade, and eventually to a participation 
 in honours. Such changes cannot happen without great 
 causes being at work in the framework of society.* 
 
 A gentleman who lived in the country usually kept a few 
 sheep. He had his own wool carded, and then spun and 
 wove into cloth for his domestic purposes. The gentleman 
 who records the following charges must have been very 
 economic in his arrangements : — 
 
 * Mr. T. Hearn, "Qui Quondam." 
 
THE COMMONWEALTH, — IMPORTANT SCHEME. 369 
 
 S. d. 
 
 13 lbs. of wool combed came to - - 3 4 
 
 21 yds. of cloth wove - - - 1 1 
 
 Scouring and fulling . - - - 7 0* 
 
 Before this subject is dismissed, let a few observations be 
 introduced respecting an important scheme of the time of the 
 Commonwealth, The sending about of sale goods, par- 
 tially worked, to fair and market, there to be purchased by 
 those who undertook some more advanced process, whether 
 of dyeing, setting, or such like, proved very expensive and 
 inconvenient. This was, however, indispensable, as each 
 clothier had his limits, beyond which he could not go. In 
 the North, at Leeds, Huddersfield, and other places, are vast 
 Cloth HaUs, where cloth goods, more or less advanced, are 
 exposed on certain days to purchasers. In that part of the 
 kingdom the factory system for clothing has not fully ob- 
 tained, and could not well be carried on without such great 
 marts. 
 
 In the year 1657 a scheme was in agitation to build a 
 Drapery Hall over the shambles in Broad Street, Lyme 
 Regis. This would have been a type of the great buildings in 
 the North, where such a great amount of business is done. 
 But trade was not left without shackles and gyves. Restric- 
 tions and exclusion, distinctions between freeman and out 
 of town man or foreigner, as he was called, had not been 
 removed or worn out. 
 
 The time had not arrived for freemen of a borough to 
 surrender their privileges, or for legislators to compel them 
 to do so ; and clothiers would not of course travel to the en- 
 chanted ground of a borough where a code of bye-laws existed 
 up to that time unalterable, which made against them in every 
 particular. 
 
 Thus Dorsetshire lost the benefit of the scheme, 
 
 * Sussex Archaeol. Burrell's Diary. 
 
 B B 
 
370 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Smuggling or Contraband Trade. 
 
 Bold, venturous spirits, fond of excitement, and, moreover, 
 tempted by a chance of realising great profits, after a brief 
 period of exertion and risk, have ever been found ready to 
 engage In Smuggling. In time of peace, the whole of the 
 south coast of England may appear to the casual observer 
 equally suited as a starting point for the contraband dealer. 
 He buys the commodities required at some French port; 
 whence, upon taking his departure, he enters upon the peril- 
 ous adventures of stormy nights, surf-bound coast, vigilant 
 officers, treacherous confederates, and many mishaps arising 
 from unforeseen causes. When war closes the ports of 
 France, then the coast opposite the Channel Islands, Guern- 
 sey, and Alderney, is more especially the seat of smuggling, 
 as the east coast from its proximity to Holland. 
 
 Before smuggling had received its death-blow, parts of 
 Dorset and Devon were as much concerned with smuggling 
 as some counties with any particular trade. The population 
 of whole villages supported themselves by such an unlawful 
 occupation. Who was there that deemed the purchase of 
 contraband articles sinful or improper ? The best of the re- 
 sidents of sea-side towns made no scruple of buying any- 
 thing the dealer of smuggled goods had for sale. Well 
 might old Eattenbury, the bold smuggler, when boasting at 
 a trial that he had brought up his son very carefully, say in 
 answer to a question, if he had taught him the command- 
 ment, " Thou shalt not smuggle," that he did not see any 
 harm in a little free trade. His superiors did not set him a 
 good example. Free Trade did not bear its present occupa- 
 tion, but was an euphemism for contraband dealing, a disre- 
 gard of fiscal laws. In 1735, when there was a duty of 
 1/. a gallon upon rum, that spirit, as well as brandy and wine, 
 were landed on our south-west coast. The Custom House 
 officers had riding officers, tidesmen, and boatmen upon the 
 look out, who made seizures sometimes in consequence of in- 
 formation, at others by sweeping at the bottom of the 
 
SMUGGLING. — THE POET W. CROWE. 371 
 
 sea, where a raft of tubs containing rum, brandy, &c. was 
 supposed to be sunk. 
 
 It is not on every occasion that the dryness of fiscal mat- 
 ters can be enlivened by the labours of the poet. The late 
 Kev. W. Crowe, in his much admired poem entitled "Lewes- 
 don HiU," a lofty eminence of West Dorset, thus apostro- 
 phises Burton Cliff, east of Bridport harbour, and gives a 
 beautiful and true picture of the coast as it was : — 
 
 " From hostile shores returning, glad I look 
 On native scenes again ; and first salute 
 Thee, Burton, and thy lofty cliff, where oft 
 The nightly blaze is kindled ; further seen 
 Than erst was that love-tended cresset, hung 
 Beside the Hellespont : yet not like that 
 Inviting to the hospitable arms 
 Of beauty and youth, but lighted up, the sign 
 Of danger, and of ambush'd foes to warn 
 The stealth-approaching vessel, homeward bound 
 From Havre or the Norman isles, with freight 
 Of wines and hotter drinks, the trash of France 
 Forbidden merchandise. Such fraud to quell 
 Many a light skiff and well appointed sloop 
 Lies hovering near the coast, or hid behind 
 Some curved promontory, in hope to seize 
 These contraband : vain hope ! on that high shore 
 Station'd, th' associates of their lawless trade 
 Keep watch, and to their fellows off at sea 
 Give the known signal ; they with fearful haste 
 Observant, put about the ship, and plunge 
 Into concealing darkness. As a fox 
 That from the cry of hounds and hunters' din 
 Runs crafty down the wind, and steals away 
 Forth from his cover, hopeful so t'elude 
 The not yet following pack, — if chance the shout 
 Of eager or unpractised boy betray 
 His meditated flight, back he retires 
 To shelter him in the thick wood : so these 
 Retiring, ply to south, and shun the land 
 Too perilous to approach : and oft at sea 
 
 BB 2 
 
372 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Secure (or ever nigh the guarded coast 
 They venture) to the trackless deep they trust 
 Their forfeitable cargo, rundlets small 
 Together link'd upon their cable's length, 
 And to the shelving bottom sunk and fixt 
 By stony vreights ; till happier hours arrive 
 To land it on the vacant beach unrisk'd." 
 
 The lighting fires upon the hills along the coast as signals 
 to the returning smuggler has become a punishable offence 
 under an Act of Parliament. The poet would now miss this 
 feature in the western landscape. 
 
 The great changes wrought in the laws that refer to smug- 
 gling were important to the interests of great numbers of 
 persons of property who risked money in such ventures. As 
 the laws in force were evaded with the adroitness too gene- 
 rally displayed in such matters, others were framed that had 
 in their turn to be remodelled, or which became a dead letter. 
 
 All the cutters which cruized after smugglers were not 
 the property of the Crown. Some belonged to private indi- 
 viduals, who fitted them out to capture smugglers and their 
 crews, as privateers do an enemy. This was a speculation 
 depending upon the success of the vessels so fitted out. Capt. 
 Lisle of Lyme, afterwards of Weymouth, the son of an 
 officer of customs at Lyme, owned several of those cruizers. 
 
 The fast sailing and fast rowing luggers were in great re- 
 ^juest for the voyage across the channel. Then came some 
 enactments, and these were no longer permitted to be used. 
 Small sailing vessels were licensed, and two bondsmen were 
 required in a good sum of money. If the craft had not a 
 sliding bowsprit, only that fixed one called a steaved bow- 
 sprit, no bond was required. Owners that intended to send 
 their craft " across," i. e., over to France, steaved their bow- 
 sprit, and so, as it were, proclaimed their speedy intention. 
 All the Beer fishing luggers, known as Beer boats, went 
 smuggling. Caught in a gale, they have been known to 
 make their tubs into a raft, throw them overboard, and drift 
 to leeward. The sea broke upon the floating tubs of spirits, 
 iind the open boat lived through the storm. 
 
SMUGGLING. — TOBACCO. — SPIRITS. 373 
 
 The poet says nothing of tobacco. This was an important 
 branch of the illicit trade. The store of captured tobacco 
 was occasionally so great in the Lyme Custom House that it 
 was burnt in a lime kiln, which was situated where the first 
 warehouse on the Cobb now stands. The kiln was actually 
 filled with tobacco, and each of the assembled bye-standers 
 had an opportunity of stuffing his pockets full. At length 
 the fire was applied, and the flavour could be sniffed at a 
 great distance to leeward by the hardy mariner, who de- 
 plored such a waste of this cherished commodity. Tobacco- 
 stalks and fibres have also been smuggled for the being 
 - ground into snuff. 
 
 Smuggled spirits may well be styled " the trash of 
 France." The article is a very inferior one, and is believed 
 to be mainly derived from distillation from potatoes. In 
 France the price was about half-a-crown a gallon, which the 
 retail dealer here sold at fourteen shillings. The kegs held 
 six, but the greater number only four gallons. These were 
 slung across the shoulders of the helps, as those men who 
 went down to the shore to run a cargo were called. At 
 certain points strings of pack horses carried the cargo in- 
 land, or their substitute, light carts, where the improved 
 roads admitted of their use. 
 
 The law's changes within a few brief years respecting 
 smuggling would occupy much space. At one time, so late 
 as about the year 1780, smugglers were allowed a latitude 
 that will be scarcely credited. Nothing could be seized above 
 high-water mark ; so that pipes of wine have actually been 
 landed close to the Custom House at Lyme, then at the bottom 
 of the town, and allowed to remain on the beach and Cobb- 
 gate leading to the Custom House ! Vessels used to come 
 along ashore ; when, if no officer of the customs — the only 
 one who made captures — was there, the goods were landed. 
 If there was any interruption, the craft went elsewhere, and 
 landed, or returned again to the same spot. At one time 
 some vessels of about 100 tons were employed, called ton- 
 nagers. The papers were made out as if from Cherburg 
 to Ostend. One of these was boarded off the Cobb, and 
 
 BB 3 
 
374 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 found to be full of wine, and her papers were inspected. 
 The next day she entered the Cobb without a single pipe 
 of wine. Mr. Raymond, the collector of customs, seized 
 her, as he said she could not have gone to Ostend and back 
 in one night. The smugglers contested the matter in a trial 
 at Dorchester. The evidence was complete to prove that 
 the vessel was laden with wine one day, and the next was 
 empty. The smugglers pleaded their having thrown over- 
 board the cargo, to prevent the vessel from sinking. The 
 judge having questioned one of the custom-house oflBcers who 
 boarded the vessel as to her condition at the time, the man, 
 who had been bribed, answered, that he said to another 
 officer, " Let us be off, or we shall share the fate of poor 
 Admiral Kempenfelt." This saved the smugglers. 
 
 Some who were deeply engaged in smuggling ventures 
 used to go round the country after the manner of mercantile 
 travellers, and ask gentlemen what they would " give to 
 have a pipe or hogshead of wine put into their cellars?" 
 The price being agreed upon, it was only a question of con- 
 veyance. In a store at Bridport harbour, there were hun- 
 dreds of pipes of wine at a time, not seizable as the law then 
 stood. 
 
 A smuggler named Gulliver kept forty or fifty men con- 
 stantly employed, who wore a kind of livery, powdered hair, 
 and smock frocks, from which they obtained the name of the 
 " white wigs." These men kept together, and would not 
 allow a few officers to take what they were carrying, when 
 the law was altered, and seizures were made from other 
 weaker parties. Gulliver amassed a large fortune, and lived 
 to a good old age. He employed lawyers to arrange his 
 affairs so that all who should take any benefit from his for- 
 tune should bear the name of Gulliver. K not impressed, 
 like the ancients, with a desire of posthumous fame, this 
 worthy dreaded posthumous determination to be silent as to 
 the founder of the fortune. Till of late years a chamber, 
 open towards the sea at the mouth of the river Lyme, was 
 in existence, where the " white wigs " took refreshment, and 
 
PREVENTION OF SMUGGLING. — FINES. 375 
 
 remained in waiting till their services were required. This 
 was not one hundred yards from the former custom house. 
 One party of smugglers, with their convoy of spirit, fought 
 with officers in the streets of London, and were victors. Let 
 no reader understand that Gulliver's men were assailants, or 
 ferocious in any encounter. The smugglers of the south- 
 western coast have ever been remarkable for their quiet 
 manner of pursuing their illicit calling. There never has 
 been a series of violence and bloodshed such as has disgraced 
 so often the south-eastern coast. 
 
 A great blow has been dealt to smuggling by the establish- 
 ment of the Preventive Service. The whole coast is pa- 
 trolled, and cutters cruize, so as to make smuggling a very 
 unprofitable affair. The rich have disconnected themselves 
 from it entirely. For a time the " goods " were brought 
 over in French bottoms. A large new boat was launched, 
 and Englishmen rowed to land, where the boat was sure to 
 be sacrificed if the spirits were run without interruption. 
 None but naval lieutenants are now admitted into the Pre- 
 ventive Service, under the inspecting naval commanders. 
 Rewards for captures depend upon the strength of the spirit 
 so seized ; and the scale is altered if the men are captured 
 as well as the goods. 
 
 A man convicted of smuggling playing cards, tobacco, 
 spirits, &c., if a seafaring man, used to be sent to serve for 
 five years in a man-of-war on a foreign station, receiving 
 pay however. Now, each offender pays a fine of lOOZ., or is 
 committed for six calendar months. Women and children 
 coming over in the passage-vessels, decked out with tobacco 
 bustles, pay not exceeding 51., if the weight is under 5 lbs., 
 at the determination of the magistrate ; but if the weight is 
 above 5 lbs., a fine of lOOZ. or imprisonment for six months 
 must be imposed. 
 
 After all these terrors and means to crush smuggling, the 
 great cheapness of British gin, the fear on the part of the 
 consumer of being fined, and of being at the mercy of any in- 
 former, now that smuggling is in such very low hands, and 
 
 BB 4 
 
376 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEBN COUNTIES. 
 
 an increased sense of moral duty to tte state, combine in a 
 great degree to keep down the illicit trade in spirits, which 
 would continue to a greater extent did these not exist 
 
 The Lace Trade, its Origin, early Introduction into West 
 Dorset and South-east Devon ; with Particulars of the 
 making Bone, Lyme, Pill, i. e. Pillow, or Honiton Lace. 
 
 " In tenui labor." — Vikg. 
 
 A FOREIGN land claims the invention of a light beautifnl 
 fabric, everywhere known as lace. But the time of its in- 
 troduction into West Dorset and South-east Devon has not 
 been ascertained. 
 
 The several appellations of our lace require some ex- 
 planation, and have puzzled strangers. The same light fabric 
 is spoken of as bone, Lyme, pill or piUow, and Honiton 
 lace. It is sometimes designated as real or hand-made lace. 
 
 From the bobbins upon which the thread is wound, having 
 been made of bone before the general introduction of some 
 of the hard foreign woods, the article was called bone lace, 
 as it was pill or pillow lace, from the globe-shaped cushion 
 upon which it was fashioned. From the circumstance of the 
 dealers, who visited the metropolis and the great towns, re- 
 siding at Lyme and Honiton, their bone lace was extensively 
 known as Lyme lace, and Honiton lace, though much of it 
 had not been made in either town. 
 
 Our lace was not wove. It had neither warp nor woof, 
 but was rather, writes Beckman, knit after the manner of 
 nets, filets, or stockings. The pattern is stuck upon a slip 
 of parchment, and fastened to the globe-shaped cushion. 
 The thread is wound upon the requisite number of spindles 
 called bobbins, and these are thrown over and under each 
 other various ways, so that the threads twine round pins 
 stuck in the holes of the pattern, and by this means produce 
 that multiplicity of eyes or openings which give to the lace 
 
"POINT LACE." — SALE OF NEEDLES. 377 
 
 the desired figures. 'Much art is not necessary, and the 
 invention of it is not so ingenious as that of wearing stock- 
 ings.* 
 
 The oldest kind of lace is that worked with the needle 
 (now exclusively named point-lace), and which was by far 
 the dearest. 
 
 Needles, Stow writes, were sold in Cheapside in the reign 
 of Queen Mary, and were made by a Spanish negro by a 
 secret art. 
 
 Beckman asserts that the knitting of lace is a German 
 invention before 1561, due to Barbara, wife of Christopher 
 Ultman, at St. Annaberg, in Saxony. About that period 
 the mines were less productive, and the making of veils, 
 followed by the families of the miners, had declined, as there 
 was little demand for them. The new invention, therefore, 
 was soon known to the wives and daughters of the miners ; 
 and the lace, on account of the low price of labour, soon be- 
 came fashionable, in opposition to the Italian lace worked 
 with the needle, and even supplanted it in commerce. Beck- 
 man could find no mention of the art of knitting lace, nor 
 any of the terms that belong to It, before the middle of the 
 16th century, therefore he concludes that Barbara Ultman 
 originated the invention, and did not introduce it. 
 
 Beckman refers to the history of St. Annaberg, written 
 after the fashion of the day, in Latin f : — 
 
 "Hoc anno, 1561, filuni album retortum in varias formas 
 Phrygio opere % duel coepit, quod ut ad mediocrem ornatum ad- 
 hibitum reprehendi minime potest, praesertim re metallica vehe- 
 menter attrita, ita cavendum tamen, ne vanitati et luxuriae 
 serviat." 
 
 This year, 1561, white thread, twisted into various patterns, 
 began to be wOve into a kind of Phrygian work, which, as it is 
 
 * Beckman, Hist, of Inventions, ii. 32. 
 
 t Annabergse urbis Historia, auctore Paulo Jenisio. Dresdae, 1605, 
 4to. ii. p. 33. 
 
 X Phrygian work is embroidery, borders ingeniously worked, and sown 
 upon tapestry. 
 
378 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 made use of for an inexpensive set-ofF of dress, cannot at all 
 be the object of censure provided that due care be taken that 
 this be not rendered subservient to vanity and luxury. * 
 
 In the reign of Queen Elizabeth we have evidence that 
 lace was well known, although regarded as sufficiently rare 
 to be deemed a worthy oifering to royalty itself. " In the 
 manifold account of gifts accepted by this acquisitive monarch 
 from various grades of her subjects, lace finds honourable 
 mention. It is on record that Sir Philip Sidney presented 
 her Majesty with a * smock ' of cambric, the sleeves and 
 collar wrought with black silk, and edged with a small bone 
 lace ; whilst Mrs. Twist, the Court laundress, contributed to 
 the regal wardrobe three handkerchiefs of black Spanish 
 work similarly adorned." f 
 
 The circumstances and date of the first introduction of 
 lace-making — doubtless from Flanders — are not known. 
 In the east of the north porch in Honiton churchyard is a 
 brass plate to the memory of James Ridge, bone-lace seller, 
 who died in 1617, aged 50, leaving 100?. to the poor of that 
 town. 
 
 "Westcot, in his MS. Survey of Devon (1630), writes, fol. 
 169., of Honiton: here is made abimdance of bone lace, a 
 pretty toy, now greatly in request, and therefore Honiton 
 may say, with merry Martial, " Ille ego sum nulli nugarum 
 laude secundus :" 
 
 " In praise for toys such as this 
 Honiton to none second is." 
 
 Some Flemish refugees brought the art of making lace int« 
 the western borders of Bedfordshire. 
 
 A free school was endowed at Great Marlow, in Buck- 
 inghamshire, in 1626, to teach twenty-four boys to read, and 
 twenty-four girls to knit, spin, and make bone lace. 
 
 The Count de Marsan brought his former nurse, named 
 
 * Thread has been spun by hand in Hainault, worth 400Z. per lb. 
 •)■ See in a number of Chambers's Edinburgh publication an admh'able 
 account of lace-making, in 32 pages. 
 
LACE-MAKING. — MILITARY DEPREDATIONS. 379 
 
 * 
 
 Du Mont, from Brussels to Paris, and obtained from Colbert 
 an exclusive right for her to carry on the lace manufactory 
 in that capital in 1666. 
 
 During the Protectorate, when every action was made the 
 subject of petty legislation by corporations and the assembled 
 members of dissenting congregations, we may well expect 
 that a new article of ornamental dress would excite attention 
 and be forbidden, or find sanction under some restriction 
 couched in the inimitable phraseology of that time. Points 
 (the early French word for our lace) are not absolutely 
 forbidden ; but " points, or ribbons, and more laces than are 
 required on garments," furnished matter for a letter from the 
 members of the Baptist churches assembled at Bridgewater, 
 1655. The "beleeven men" fuUy believed how careful it 
 was necessary to be in the treatment of brethren and sisters 
 refusing to reform in the wearing of "gold, pearls, and 
 costly array." They desired that these might be proceeded 
 against with all sweetness, and tenderness, and long-sufiering, 
 it being not so clearly and generally understood as other 
 things that are more contrary to the light of nature.* 
 
 Lace-making went on in several little country places of 
 South-east Devon towards the close of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury. After the suppression of Monmouth's rebellion, in 
 1686, the dragoons of Lord Cornbury and Lord Churchill, 
 afterwards the great Duke of Marlborough, who was bom at 
 Ashe House close by, were quartered at Colyton. Soldiers 
 were then a terror to the peaceable. They broke into the 
 house of William Bird, a dealer in bone lace, and stole goods 
 to the value of 325Z. 17*. 9d. 
 
 Before Lyme Regis began to rise as a watering place, 
 from a state of great decay, about the year 1750, lace-makers 
 occupied almost every house in Broad Street. They worked 
 a dress for Queen Charlotte of Lyme lace, as the Honiton 
 lace-makers have since done for Queen Adelaide. Her 
 present Majesty's order of a bridal dress of Honiton lace was 
 
 * Church Book of the Baptist Chapel of Lyme Regis. 
 
380 SOCIAL HI8T0KT OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 executed at Beer. The distress of the lace-makers at Honr- 
 tpn, after two great fires in 1756 and 1767, is spoken of. 
 
 Lovers used to have their initials entwined, worked on a 
 piece of ornamental lace. Old Catherine Power, the last 
 of the lace-makers at Lyme, and likewise a fortune-teller, 
 begged, some time before her death, a copy of certain initials 
 to be worked in lace. She would, on taking home the order, 
 just " cut the cards '' — a modified term for telling a fortune. 
 A splendid work upon the Great Exhibition* contains 
 some valuable addition to the early history of the lace trade, 
 communicated by Mrs. Treadwin of Exeter. 
 
 Although the lace trade was extensive a century ago, it 
 must then and for a long time after have principally consisted 
 in producing the nett or Honiton ground (a nett much like the 
 present machine nett), in which the sprigs first separately 
 made were worked in on the pillow. This kind of nett was 
 very expensive, and one of the old people formerly in the 
 trade showed Mrs. Treadwin a piece about eighteen inches 
 square, which she had had made just previous to the machine 
 netts coming into use, and which then cost her in making 
 15/., although it was plain nett only. The surprising ma- 
 chinery for the making of nett was introduced when the 
 same size piece of nett was sold for about as many shillings, 
 and now for fewer pence. So effectually did this destroy 
 the trade of hand-made nett, that only two persons are known 
 by Mrs. Treadwin who can make it. Chard, in South 
 Somerset, has two large factories for the manufacture of 
 machine-nett. One employs about 300 hands ; another 180 
 hands, both exclusive of menders ; Tiverton, in Devon, has 
 noted factories. The introduction of the new article was the 
 occasion of much suffering, while the unfortunate lace-makers 
 tried to compete — a hopeless effort — with machinery. They 
 could not earn sufficient to maintain life. Young women 
 
 * The Industrial Arts of the 1 9th Century : a series of illustrations 
 of the choicest specimens produced by every nation at the Great Exhibi- 
 tion of Works of Industry, 1851, by M. Digby Wyatt, Architect. Day 
 and Son, 1853. 
 
OEDEE OF QTTEEN ADELAIDE. — MES. TEEADWIN. 381 
 
 went out to service ; few children were trained to the use of 
 the pillow, and the trade was greatly depressed for twenty 
 years, when Queen Adelaide ordered a Honiton lace dress to 
 be made of Honiton lace sprigs sewn on machine nett. This 
 compromise or union of the two interests found but few 
 followers. Her present gracious Majesty's bridal dress was 
 of Honiton sprigs, connected together by a variety of open 
 works, &c., and all worked on the pillow. 
 
 Her Majesty's order found only a few hands employed 
 about the country, none in Lyme or in Dorset, but in Devon 
 over a tract that might be enclosed by a line from Seaton to 
 Exmouth, up the river Exe to Exeter, back the London road 
 to Honiton, thence to Seaton. The trade revived, and affords 
 a good livelihood to many thousand hands, the majority of the 
 female labouring population. 
 
 Sidmouth, Beer, Branscombe, Colyton, and Honiton, are 
 the residences of many workers and dealers, some of whom 
 travel through England ; but of late, at one time, the demand 
 has far exceeded the supply. Some years ago poverty and 
 lace-making were associated. Such is not now the case. 
 
 The West of England has lost the woollen trade. Is 
 it that the genius for manufactiu-ing is wanting ? Mrs. 
 Treadwin's skilled remarks would make us believe this is the 
 case. The great majority of the hands are careless and in- 
 different as to die beauty of their work, and as a body dis- 
 liking regular work and hours, preferring to work at home by 
 the piece, generally fond of dress, and careless of the future. 
 Finding no one effort made to improve in the art by the 
 village lace-makers, though they were generally able to read 
 and write, the same lady tried to work out some reformation 
 of the old. This has failed, so she is labouring to improve 
 the young lace-makers, in which we trust she may succeed. 
 She affirms that there is not one lace-designer in Devonshire. 
 Her designs used to be, till last summer, from Paris, now 
 from Somerset House and Nottingham, which fact furnishes 
 subject for congratulation. May the future historian be able 
 to enrol Mrs. Treadwin as the person who has added dignity 
 to an art hitherto pursued with very little ability. 
 
382 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Lille lace differs but little from Buckinghamsliire lace ; 
 Brussels plait from the best Honiton. 
 
 Honiton, or west country lace, must now be classed under 
 two heads : — 
 
 I. Honiton applique, the original lace. 
 
 II. Honiton guipure, lace invented about twenty years. 
 
 I. The Honiton applique, the original description of lace, 
 consists of the finest net, sprigged and edged with a border 
 more or less handsome, used for veUs, mantles, dresses, and 
 large articles of ladies' attire. The hand-labour bestowed 
 upon this kind of lace is much smaller than that demanded 
 by the other kind, and the price is proportionably lower. 
 
 II. The Honiton guipure, invented within the last twenty 
 years, is not dissimilar in style from the old point lace, al- 
 though very much lighter in texture. The separate sections 
 of the pattern are united by delicate fibres, which in the 
 best qualities of the lace are made on the pillow, forming, 
 in fact, part of the pattern ; but in the less expensive spe- 
 cimens they are made afterwards with a needle and thread. 
 A flounce at the Great Exhibition was five yards long, on 
 which forty women were employed for eight months.* The 
 western lace manufactories are fully employed, in 1855, in 
 the fabric of silk lace. 
 
 Travellers have not had to dread coming into the western 
 lace district, as they had to a few stages on the great north 
 road from London. The box of lace there regularly suc- 
 ceeded the dinner. The waiter brought round a box of 
 beautiful specimens of lace for sale, and so levied contri- 
 butions on the purses of the travellers. 
 
 It will be interesting to learn that lace-making has been 
 introduced of late into Nagercoil, in Southern India, by the 
 missionaries. 
 
 * See Messrs. Chambers's publication, p. 27 
 
SILK- THROWING. — PRIVATE LOTTERIES. 383 
 
 A Postscript about Silk-throwing. 
 
 So early as the year 1463 a petition was presented by the 
 " silk women " of this country against the Lombards, who 
 imported thrown silks. We learn by it how extensively 
 silk-throwing and weaving was practised by ladies, so that 
 the nunneries were not the only schools of elegant occupa- 
 tion. 
 
 The petition states, " of silk throwing, whereby many a 
 worshipful woman within the same city (London) has lived 
 full honourably, and therewith many good households kept ; 
 and many gentlewomen and others in great number like as 
 there be now more than 1000 have been drawn under them 
 in learning the same crafts and occupation, full virtuously 
 unto the pleasance of God, whereby afterwards they have 
 grown to great worship," &c. 
 
 Private Lotteries for Houses and Estates. 
 
 The spirit of gambling, unless repressed by law, will be 
 found to break out under various phases to the great detri- 
 ment of society, which, when it rages, becomes demoralised 
 by its pernicious effects upon the human mind. The excite- 
 ment grows, as some novel form becomes established from 
 time to time, till a perfect mania reigns. 
 
 It has been elsewhere shown how, in the time of Queen 
 Elizabeth, butchers' shops were the scenes of gambling ad- 
 venture. A particular form of gambling had obtained — 
 that of raffling, or engaging in a game of chance for meat 
 — the prize. 
 
 When the havens of England were in a state of great 
 decay, the mode adopted for their restoration was that per- 
 nicious one of public lotteries ; the first of which took place 
 in the year 1569. 
 
 Lotteries, or raffles, were the rage at the close of the 
 
384 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 seventeeth century ; — not for objects of trifling value, but 
 for -whole estates, sometimes for houses and fields. 
 
 What a cause for the disturbing the even tenor of pri- 
 vate life where the fair chance of the lottery Avas alone 
 thought of. As might be anticipated where dishonesty 
 came into play, all kinds of fraud were ready. 
 
 A notable instance of a private lottery in Dorset, with 
 an episode that grew out of it, has been recorded by the 
 much revered Hutchins, the historian of Dorset. In ac- 
 counting for the transmission of property, he turned aside 
 to relate a trait of domestic history that occasioned the 
 alienation of an estate. 
 
 The estate of Winford Eagle was the property of the 
 Sydenham family. 
 
 WUIiam Sydenham, Esq., was the son of William, bro- 
 ther of Thomas Sydenham, M.D., the celebrated physician, 
 who adopted the cool treatment in small-pox, used bark in 
 agues, and laudanum. 
 
 This Dorsetshire squire, being embarrassed, determined 
 to put up his ancestral estate to the chance of private lot- 
 tery, intending unfairly to make the prize fall to a poor 
 female relative, whom he depended on being able to pre- 
 vail upon to let him have it back again for a small con- 
 sideration. 
 
 The young lady had a lover who visited her by stealth, to 
 whom she communicated the news of her being about to 
 have a chance given her. As was preyously arranged, the 
 poor relative won the estate, and soon found means to in- 
 form her lover, who was waiting to hear the result of her 
 success. Perhaps, suspecting some such manceuvre, the 
 lover advised her not to return the estate to Mr. Sydenham 
 — advice which made her proof against the charms or 
 terrors of persuasion. 
 
 The fortunate lady married Doily Michel, Esq., who 
 sold the estate to G. Richards, Esq., of Longbredy. Upon 
 Mr. Sydenham and his two daughters refusing to make a 
 formal surrender of the estate to the vendor, they were 
 committed to Dorchester gaol about the year 1709, where 
 they ended their days. 
 
RAGR FOR LOTTERIES. 
 
 385 
 
 Much good resulted from this memorable lottery ; for 
 owing to the exposure of this case, the system of private 
 lotteries was condemned by an Act of the 10 and 11 William 
 and Mary, which finally put an end to them. 
 
 There existed a rage for lotteries, or " sales," as they 
 were called. Every conceivable thing was put up to raffle. 
 There were advertisements for " A Sixpenny sale of Lace," 
 " A Hundred pounds for Half-a-Crown," " A Penny Ad- 
 venture for a Great Pie," " A Quarter's Rent," " A Free- 
 hold Estate," " Threepenny sales of Houses," " A fashion- 
 able Coach;" gloves, looking-glasses, chocolate, Hungary 
 water, Indian goods, lacquered ware, fans, &c., were notified 
 to be disposed of in this manner, and the fair mob were 
 called together to draw their tickets by the same means. 
 This fever produced in the end the South Sea bubble.* 
 
 Joy at hailing the Return of Spring. 
 
 " When that Aprille with his schowres swoote 
 The drought of Marche hath perced to the roote, 
 And bathed every veyne in swioh licour, 
 Of which vertue engendered is the flour." 
 
 A Domestic Winter Scene. (From Worcester Cathedral.) 
 
 Quarterly Review, June, 1854. 
 C C 
 
386 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 The carver has displayed the curious chimney, the man 
 wrapped up though by the fire, and still, like the cat, suffer- 
 ing from the cold. The two-fingered gloves and two flitches 
 of bacon are deserving of attention. See Stanley's Wor- 
 cester and Malvern Gruide Book, with designs by the Misses 
 Eginton. 
 
 To read of keeping May-day, or Whitsuntide, merely as 
 a commemoration, and not from feeling of deep joy at the 
 coming of a genial season and escape from the miseries of 
 a comfortless (coal-less) winter, is a misunderstanding of the 
 matter. Our ancestors suffered from a long dreary winter, 
 when many of our present comforts were unknown ; and 
 they rejoiced in the return of genial weather, as many now- 
 a-day do who have partaken of every luxury of the winter 
 season, and have participated in no hardships or exclusion 
 from fresh meat and absence of vegetables. 
 
 To secure a sufficient stock of winter food was often a 
 subject of care and difficulty. The merry hunting in the 
 Plantagenet reigns partook of a matter of business, for deer 
 were salted in for winter use. The whole of the winter 
 store of meat was not salted, but a part was larded, or 
 preserved with pig's lard ; hence the name of the room in 
 which it was kept, the larder. Cattle could not be fattened 
 till Midsummer. 
 
 May-day scarcely saw the end of salted and larded meat, 
 and much that was trying to the human frame, when the 
 possessor was not rich. Fish was dear and scarce. View- 
 ing the change of season in this light, our ancestors gave 
 way to joyful manifestations, and had recourse to the fol- 
 lowing mode of expressing their joy : — 
 
 Wm. Tudbold, Mayor of Lyme, 1551. 
 
 Item, paid to - Eobert Willyms to chute the gones on May- 
 day, iiJjrf. 
 
 Horace, having no ordnance to fire, called for a vernal 
 dance of joy ; if better provided with means, the poet may 
 have had recourse to a noisier demonstration. 
 
THE "WESTERN EEBELLION." 387 
 
 The Western Rebellion in the Reign of Edward VI. 
 
 An entry made by John Hassard, mayor of Lyme 5th 
 Edward VI., will serve to introduce some mention of an 
 historical transaction : — 
 
 Paid to Thomas Battyn for the hire of a horse in the Commo- 
 cion time, 1*. Qd. 
 
 The Reformation was not introduced in the quiet manner 
 that obtained in other countries. The Rebellion in the 
 reign of Edward VI., of the people of Cornwall and Devon, 
 was one of great violence and bloodshed, as our annals con- 
 firm. These west countrymen spurned the Book of Common 
 Prayer as being in New English, which so many could not 
 understand, as they could neither read nor follow the service 
 in English; Cornish, a dialect of the Celtic, being their 
 language. The insurgents grew more daring, in proporti(jp 
 as mercy was offered to them ; and in their 10th article ex- 
 pressed their determination to have nothing to do with the 
 English tongue, as foUows : — 
 
 " We will have the Bible and all books of Scripture in English 
 to be called in again. For we are informed that otherwise the 
 clergy shall not of long time confound the heretics."* 
 
 Lord Russel, in this rebellion, from not having received 
 the expected supplies for suppressing it from the Court, at 
 that time so far distant, three merchants of Exeter, Prest- 
 wood, Bodlie, and Periam, assisted him with such a sum of 
 money, borrowed on their credit from the merchants of Lyme 
 and Taunton, as quite dispelled his worship's heaviness, f 
 Lord Russel defeated the rebels at Exeter, 19th Aug. 1549, 
 with the loss of 1000 men. 
 
 * Proclamation of King Henry VIII., a.d. 1526, forbade the buying, 
 receiving, or keeping the New Testament or the Old, in the English, 
 French, or Dutch tongue. Notes and Queries. 
 
 t Savage's Edit, of Toulmin's Hist, of Taunton. Hist, of Exeter, 
 Fuller, &c. 
 
 CO 2 
 
388 SOCIAL HISTOBT OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Cranmer answered the articles sent forth, some of which 
 had wholly reference to secular objects. One of the griev- 
 ances was to be redressed by not allowing a person of one 
 hundred mark land to keep more than one servant. The 
 Archbishop inquired what was to be done by the master if 
 he sent the servant to ride to London, and had no other to 
 wait upon him ? 
 
 Profitable Use made of the Ore or Sea- Weed. 
 
 A HISTORY might be written upon the changes that the 
 world has seen in the relative value of the substances with 
 which the vegetable and mineral kingdoms abound. Some 
 products of the earth and sea, once valueless, are now an 
 endless source of wealth ; while others, that for centuries 
 furnished riches to the fortunate possessors, have ceased to 
 rank in the list of valuable substances. Modern discoveries 
 in chemical science have opened new sources for man's in- 
 dustry. Our subject leads to an account of the neglect of 
 what was once very valuable, Sea-Weed or OEE-weed. 
 Wherever this grew upon the rocky ledges or shelves upon 
 our sea-coast, it was a useful product. Lyme borough ac- 
 counts in Edward VI.'s reign show that a regular income 
 was made by letting the right to cut and harvest the ore or 
 sea-weed growing upon the ledges, which are dry at low 
 water to the extent of 500 acres. 
 
 The sea-weed was burnt into ashes: Roger Garland, 
 mayor, enters, that he has " received of the man that burns 
 the ower, that was due unto the town, 27s." In 1569, " an 
 arrearage of oare " is entered 20s. The oar-burning let in 
 1589, for three years, at 40*. a year. 
 
 The renters of the ore-weed at Lyme were subject to loss 
 by depredations. They were protected by local municipal 
 laws made for the special occasion on the spot, and those, 
 too, of some severity : in 1569, " a fine for oare " is entered 
 as being 40s. This in the margin is marked thus : " For a 
 fyne for burning of oare." 
 
OEDEE OF THE COUET OF HUSTINGS. 389 
 
 In 1580, an order of the Court of Hustings was made : — 
 
 It is ordered that none do burn ore within the parish and liberty 
 without Mr. Mayor's license, upon pain of 10s. 
 
 This was not a dead letter, for a jury soon after presented 
 an oiFender for having burnt ore-weed in the parish, and he 
 was fined 2s. 
 
 Item, presentant quod Thomas Wood cremavit seu comburit 
 vevas, anglice (weeds of the sea, or oare) infra parochiam 
 citra Lioenc' Maioria. 
 
 Ideo ip' in mia", 2s. 
 
 Some persisted in this dishonest practice, so another order 
 was framed in 1596. An entry in 1621 demands some ex- 
 planation : — 
 
 Item, paid Mr. John Eoze for the charges of the oar aslies, 
 1/. 12s. %d. 
 
 This closes the accompts about burning the sea-weed. No 
 renter could be found; the sea- weed was in hand which a 
 useful helper of the corporation managed for the body with- 
 out success, it would appear. 
 
 The sea-weed thrown up after a storm is carted away for 
 manure, for which nothing is paid. Except to a few invalids, 
 to whom the pounded pods of the Fueus vesiculosus are bene- 
 ficial from the iodine they contain, as an application to 
 glandular swellings, the growing sea-weed is now worthless. 
 All soda was formerly derived from kelp, the sea-weed, which 
 contains 6 per cent, of alkali, and sold for 2001. a ton before 
 Le Blanc's method came into use.* Proprietors of land on 
 the shores of Scotland were enriched by letting out portions 
 for the preparing of kelp. This harvest has ceased there, as 
 well as on the coast of England. The reduction of the duty 
 on foreign alkali, in 1823, gave the first blow to the kelp 
 manufacture ; and the discovery of a process by which a 
 cheaper alkali might be extracted from common salt, the 
 heavy duty on which had been reduced, made both kelp and 
 barilla unsaleable. 
 
 • Alum sold for lOOZ. a ton ; it is now 10^. 
 c c 3 
 
390 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Le Blanc, by means of sulphuric acid, converted salt into 
 sulphate of soda. Eighty pounds are required for every 
 hundred pounds of salt. Hence the creating a very large 
 demand for sulphuric acid. This is made of sulphur and 
 saltpetre, or nitrate of soda. Some houses in England pro- 
 duce 1000 tons of sulphxrric acid annually. 
 
 Kelp is now only manufactured for the sake of the iodine 
 it contains ; and as this element is most abundant in the sea- 
 weed that grows at such a depth as not to be accessible in 
 situ, the kelp for iodine is made from the weed cast ashore 
 after storms. Even in the most favourable places it hardly 
 pays the cost of making it. Thirty tons of kelp produce one 
 ton only of alkali, worth now only about 3Z. 10*., instead of 
 2001. 
 
 As a set-off to the above picture, we may add that a once 
 comparatively worthless material from the same locality, — 
 blue lias limestone, — brings in quite a revenue in the pre- 
 sent day ; and some strata of the same formation, worthless, 
 as was thought, even among the disregarded layers of that 
 stone, now fetch a high price as a rapidly setting cement.* 
 
 Inability to read or write. 
 
 How striking the circumstance of our meeting with the 
 epitaphs of men much lauded for their worth, and even 
 ability, who could not read or write ! Before learning was 
 general many individuals were unlettered, ignorant in book 
 learning, who were stUl, considering the age, cultivated men, 
 clever by comparison with others. They proved what oral 
 teaching could do. In Tudor reigns numbers could sign their 
 name, who could do no more in the way of writing. They 
 may have carried their philosophy about with them, and 
 propagated it in the walking place, under the pentice, and in 
 the market. 
 
 At a Court of Hustings at Lyme Regis, 2nd November, 
 1584, "It was agreed at a Court held in the Moot Hall, 
 
 * Quart. Kcv. CLXXIX., p. 157. 
 
HIEROGLYPHICS IN THE HUSTINGS' BOOK. 391 
 
 that as well the burgesses and freemen, as well inhabitant 
 as not inhabitant, as all other inhabitants, shall be contribu- 
 tory to the payment of taxes and impositions to be levied 
 towards the charge of the burgesses for the Parliament." 
 And it is added the burgesses chose two assessors on their 
 parts, the mayor and his brethren two on their parts. 
 
 The town was not incorporated when this important 
 decision was come to, after having been duly mooted in the 
 Guild hall. After the entry in the Hustings' Book, and 
 some few signatures, appear sundry hieroglyphics, marks, 
 and initial letters, eleven in number, of those who could 
 not write — the legislators who had just determined so 
 wisely on the floor of their little house of assembly. 
 
 The following hieroglyphics are placed in laughable jux- 
 taposition with the pedantic Latin of the learned Town 
 Clerk :— 
 
 *W^ Signum : Jacobi Hackwell. 
 h^ Roberti Tyneham. 
 
 /T> Eichardi Stansby. 
 
 Roberti Myco. 
 
 3? 
 
 Henrici Palmer. 
 Johannis Sanford. 
 
 n^ Roberti Davy. 
 
 Wm. Bagster.* 
 
 ;^^ Marci Barens. 
 
 -jT Johannis Ley. 
 
 * William Bagster was the ancestor of the members of an honourable 
 London firm, who have a motto expressive of the many tongues intro- 
 duced into their Polyglot editions of the Scriptures. " TloWai iiiv Bi/tirois 
 TAaiTTai, |iiia S' Mai/arouny." " Multa;'terricolis linguae, coelestibus una." 
 
 c c 4 
 
392 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Of ninety inhabitants of Brighton who signed some orders 
 as sanctioning them in 1580, only seven wrote their own 
 autographs. After their names, written for them, the others 
 added marks, such as the anchor, the axe, the wheel, the 
 anvil, and the plough, with other professional instruments 
 and utensils. 
 
 The marks remind one of the Paraph of the Spanish, 
 and other merchants of the Contiaent. This is the name 
 given to a tortuous specimen of caligraphy, in common 
 phrase, a flourish or strike after and below the signature, 
 to render a counterfeit difficult or impossible. The Paraphs 
 of correspondents, kept by houses of business for reference, 
 have an odd effect, and resemble so many reptiles of the 
 Nile twisting and twining in all kinds of shapes. 
 
 Lest unfairness may be thought to be dealt to our pro- 
 vincial tradesmen, the writing faculty of an ambassador a 
 century earlier is here given. 
 
 Shassek, secretary to the mission of Leo, Baron of Ros- 
 mltal and Blatna, ambassador from Bohemia to the court of 
 Edward IV., mentions what power in the way of writing 
 the head of that mission displayed at Windsor in 1466. 
 After dining with the Knights of the Garter, he was re- 
 quested to write his autograph ia their mess book or album, 
 a feat which he accomplished with such dubious success 
 that when he had departed an application was sent after him 
 to return and read it. Perhaps this great man could have 
 simply written his name ; but the name with his titles added 
 made the performance a difficult task. We here detect an 
 early desire to collect autographs, which has long been an 
 established mania. 
 
 The framework of society was, at the period under con- 
 sideration, differently constructed. The far greater number 
 could not read and write. If a man now-a-days addresses 
 one who is in the latter predicament, he is apt at once to 
 treat him as an inferior in every particular, as a matter of 
 course. It was not so in Elizabeth's reign. In the present 
 age schooling or book learning is necessarily indispensable. 
 Still some who have missed this valuable acquirement are 
 
ACCOUNT OF ABBAHAM PLAISTOW. 393 
 
 cultivated, and possess great powers of mind, or what is 
 styled ability, as they did in the Tudor reigns. A living 
 Impresario, who labours under these disadvantages, is sup- 
 posed to be the best judge of music in Europe. I have 
 accidentally had working for me one who could not read or 
 write, and another who was highly accomplished in algebra. 
 The master of these two was the untaught ! 
 
 Learning was honoured in Elizabeth's and James the 
 First's reigns : a want of ability to read and write was not 
 always treated as a disgrace, though it disqualified for some 
 situations. 
 
 Daniel Morfiun, or Murefin, of Leicester, in the next 
 reign, "for that he cannot write, was by most voices dis- 
 charged from being chamberlain hereafter," and another 
 person was treated in like manner. There was no disgrace 
 attending this exclusion ; for this Mr. Morfiun was chosen 
 alderman, and died after having served the oflice of mayor 
 in 1660.* 
 
 It is becoming very rare to meet with a person in the 
 situation of a master who can neither read nor write. A 
 few years since the occurrence was more frequent, and the 
 deficient party wrapped up the circumstance in this ex- 
 pression, " I'm no scholard." 
 
 Sir Fowell Buxton's account of Abraham Plaistow, the 
 gamekeeper, who could neither read nor write, is illustrative 
 of the merits of an unlettered man, and of the fact that 
 mentally gifted individuals may be greatly pleased with 
 one who is without school learning. 
 
 " My guide, philosopher, and friend, was Abraham Plaistow, 
 the gamekeeper ; a man for whom 1 have ever felt, and still feel, 
 very great affection. He was a singular character : in the first 
 place, this tutor of mine could neither read nor write, but his 
 memory was stored with various rustic knowledge. He had 
 more of natural good sense, and what is called mother-wit, than 
 almost any person I have met with since : a knack which he had 
 of putting everything into new and singular lights made him, 
 
 " Nichol's Hist, of Leicester. 
 
394 SOCIAL HISTOBY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 and still makes him, a most entertaining, and even intellectual 
 companion. He was the most undaunted of men : I remember 
 my youthful admiration of his exploits on horseback. For a time 
 he hunted my uncle's hounds, and his fearlessness was proverbial. 
 But what made him particularly valuable were his principles of 
 integrity and honour. He never said or did a thing in the ab- 
 sence of my mother of which she would have disapproved. He 
 always held up the highest standard of integrity, and flUed our 
 youthful minds with sentiments as pure and as generous as could 
 be found in the writings of Seneca or Cicero. Such was my first 
 instructor, and, I must add, my best ; for I think I have profited 
 more by the recollection of his remarks and admonition than by 
 the more learned and elaborate discourses of all my other tutors 
 He was our playfellow and tutor ; he rode with us, fished with us, 
 shot with us, upon all occasions." 
 
 In a loyal petition from Bridgewater, in 1680, not one 
 half of those who subscribed could write their names. 
 The petition wore in consequence a very extraordinary 
 appearance. The marks resembled hieroglyphics, or, as 
 was satirically expressed, were like so many " reptiles of the 
 NUe." 
 
 Persons who had the ability, or " gift," as it was called, 
 to write, had rarely the accomplishment of being able to 
 write well and clearly. Their caligraphy was at fault; 
 hence a scrivener was applied to. This accounts for the 
 excellent writing that is displayed in archives. A clever 
 scrivener was also versed in the language suited to each 
 station, — could deal out the Suum cuique, and besides the 
 " writing," often undertook or assisted in " making," — by 
 which is meant inditing a letter. Such is the Ecrivain 
 et redacteur of French towns. 
 
 The accounts of churchwardens in the fifteenth century 
 were " made " in Latin, so the scrivener was educated in 
 grammar learning. The church official had only to make 
 some mark or nick till the scrivener came, who, learning 
 that two bell ropes had been furnished for the bells, 
 entered : — 
 
 Item, pro duos ropys pro campanis, xiiijd. 
 
 Item, solvere pro faciende de cleper de campanis, xijrf. 
 
PARISH CLERKS. — HORN BOOKS. 395 
 
 When at a loss for any Latin phrase, as of a single word, 
 the man of letters assumed the vernacular, — could not 
 perhaps, for the pay he received, afiFord time to turn the 
 matter before him into a dead language. The entries there- 
 fore exhibit an example of churchwardens' Latin, a kind 
 of Lingua Franca, e. g.x — 
 
 Item, pro lavare de sorplysa & vestments, iiijrf. 
 Item, pro faciende de cere & coste de vetell, xiijrf.* 
 
 Parish clerks in the country, about the year 1600, could 
 not write, and some could scarce read or sing.f The 
 practice of reading each verse of a hymn to be sung was 
 necessary, for the majority could not have benefited by a 
 psalter. 
 
 A comparison of anecdotes referring to distant and recent 
 epochs is often striking. 
 
 A jury had to make an inventory and valuation of armour, 
 arms, &c. at Sompting, in the reign of Edward L The 
 jurors duly priced the weapons, which were too often used 
 in everyday life, but were unable to put a price upon two 
 MS. books, " Liber Eegum," and " Liber Bestiarum."| 
 
 The time of Horn Books had not then arrived. And it 
 may be asked, who has seen a Horn Book, except as a 
 curiosity in a museum ? Thousands were annually manu- 
 factured only a few years ago. Some do not know what 
 this earliest school implement really was. The alphabet 
 was inserted in a wooden frame, to be held in the hand, 
 and was covered over with horn to protect the paper, hence 
 the whole was called a Horn Book. 
 
 Utility or necessity, not the whim of fashion, made trades- 
 men adopt a sign like the landlords of inns in the present 
 day. " The Two Storks " and " Half Moon " over the 
 window directed many a servant and customer who could 
 not have made out the name or business in letters. 
 
 * Account of Cowfold, temp. Edward IV. Sussex Archseol. Coll. 
 
 I Nelson's Rights of the Clergy. 
 
 I W. H. Blauw, Esq., Com. to Sussex Archseol. Soc. 
 
396 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 When London was paved or pitched with Scotch stone 
 in 1764, all sign-posts and other posts to divide the foot- 
 way from the roadway were removed.* This altered much 
 the appearance of the streets. 
 
 Painting, writes Professor Hart, was the book of the 
 ignorant, who knew not how to read in any other. The 
 Cure of Troyes caused three windows to be painted, to serve 
 as a catechism and instruction book to the people. 
 
 With the spread of knowledge of reading and writing, 
 tallies, or nicked sticks, gradually disappeared. The memo- 
 randum book, price 2d., and now Id., superseded the nick- 
 stick for many purposes, as the parish and domestic clocks 
 and watches caused the hour-glass to fall into disuse. Tallies 
 were used long after writing was a common acquirement, 
 the object being to prevent forgery. 
 
 Numeral letters were used to express the sums till about 
 1613, from which time the Arabic figures are employed. 
 From about 1595, though the items are in letters, the totals 
 are in Arabic figures. 
 
 Till about the year 1810, and later, type rejected from 
 a printer's cases, because of being broken and worn, was 
 sold to print cheap books for children f, a class of readers 
 which requires distinctness and perfection in each letter. 
 
 As we sit in ovr pew v^e can see the par son 
 in the pui pit, and !-.e can see us. 
 
 The general extension throughout our country towns of 
 the faculty of reading, among even the lowest class, has 
 proved fatal to the success of a character who now only 
 proclaims his wares with nasal twang and peculiar emphasis 
 in villages and hamlets. 
 
 Need I say the " last dying speech and confession man '' is 
 here designated, — one who early set off from the county town, 
 at the close of the assize, with a " right true and particular 
 
 * Notes and Queries, Oct. 27. 1855, p. 323. 
 t A B C books sold, in 1583, at \d. each. 
 
KEADIKG LIGHTLY ESTIMATED. 397 
 
 account of all those prisoners that had been tried before my 
 Lord Judge," printed on a broad sheet for a penny or half- 
 penny, according to its length. 
 
 For many assizes no " last dying speech man " has come 
 to Lyme. The one who visited West Dorset on the latest 
 occasion traversed the Broad Street, Lyme, and the servant- 
 maids, who were wont to flock to the windows and doors 
 to buy, plied their work unmoved. The orator looked 
 back upon the street and entered upon a soliloquy, in which 
 the inhabitants were denounced, and he announced aloud 
 that he would come no more to such a place. 
 
 The servants who could read the trials of the prisoners, 
 and the civil cases heard at the assize as well in the county 
 newspapers taken in by their masters, were unwilling to 
 pay for a dry list of names. 
 
 Reading is a matter lightly estimated where all the 
 appliances are at hand ; master first, then, books. Only 
 take to the secluded valleys of a remote county, there it 
 becomes a difficult matter even yet to obtain instruction. 
 In a deep comb of Devonshire a master was found for 
 a Sunday school. He proved to be a bad character, who 
 was there for concealment. A parishioner took the direc- 
 tions of a class. His services were such as we might suppose 
 to have been like those rendered in the fifteenth century. 
 First boy reads a verse in the New Testament. A pause 
 ensues. The master finds no fault. First boy says to his 
 master, " Reuben dw'unt seem to I that's fitty." Reuben 
 is in doubt whether it is so or not. Thereupon master and 
 scholars, teacher (?) and learners (?) commune together and 
 comment upon the subject matter upon an almost equal 
 amount or modicum of the reading faculty. This state of 
 things obtained in higher branches of learning before this 
 blessing was generally diffused. It can now only be tole- 
 rated in a sequestered valley, but must have been so over the 
 whole breadth of the land. 
 
398 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 JVo Mention made of Paintings. — Chained Books. 
 
 No mention of any money having been paid for a painting 
 is made in any archives that I have examined. No " limner's" 
 name appears. The fine arts could not have been at all 
 patronised in the country towns under the Tudor sovereigns. 
 A century' after the estate of the compounder, Philip Palmer, 
 of Dorney, Buck§, consisted almost entirely of paintings. 
 Where can any mention of an earlier instance of a private 
 gallery be found ? 
 
 There are no entries for payment for books for private 
 individuals. How long was it after the introduction of 
 printing and printed books that the burgesses of our towns 
 possessed so valuable a property, one justly deemed so 
 precious ? 
 
 Books printed in black letter were given to churches for 
 the use of the parishioners. They rested upon a large table, 
 and each was chained in a secure manner. One dictionary 
 was placed chained in a school for the use of the scholars, 
 " tyed in a cheyne." 
 
 Little could the donor have imagined that a beautiful 
 bound copy of the Holy Scriptures could be purchased for a 
 mere trifling sum of a few pence. 
 
 Book chains are happily unknown. 
 
 One Adam de Oxenforth made his appearance at York as 
 the first practiser of the art of bookbinding in the reign of 
 Edward III. 
 
 Berthelet, the first royal printer, charged one penny a leaf 
 for his work in 1531. At this rate a book would cost a good 
 sum, much more than is charged in the present day. 
 
 Particulars respecting the Board and Education of Young 
 Persons of either Sex. 
 
 Much attention has been called in the present century to 
 the school system carried on in Yorkshire, which a popular 
 
ACCOUNT or THE T0RK8HIKE SCHOOLS. 399 
 
 writer has exposed, and so powerfully, that it can be con- 
 tinued no longer. 
 
 The great fraud consisted in taking in boys for board and 
 education, as if the usual conditions of such establishments 
 were to be observed. The cultivation of a farm by the 
 master and his numerous pupils was quite kept out of view. 
 The students were partly labourers ; school, literally, as the 
 word implies, a place of leisure, was indeed for them a place 
 of toil. 
 
 After all the odium which has been thrown upon these 
 northern tricksters, the parents were really as much to 
 blame. They knew the sum paid was no remuneration for 
 clothes, the very meanest food, and any teaching at all. So 
 they expected little under these heads, and surmised the 
 labour element, which entered largely into the affair. 
 
 The taking in children to instruct them, and then to 
 employ them for services conducive to the advantage of the 
 keeper of " Dotheboys HaU," is not a modern idea. The 
 terms for schooling were often too low; but it had been 
 fair to have stipulated for services to be rendered to eke 
 out. The modern agricultural schools for the poor have 
 a morning for instruction in books, an afternoon for 
 work, with payment accordingly — aU duly set forth in 
 the public notices. There are such for a higher class in 
 Canada. 
 
 In James I.'s reign. Sir John Bramston refers, in his 
 Diary, to his going out in the morning, the day on which 
 some particular occurrence took place, with his books to 
 study (?) at a distance of three or four miles, while he watched 
 his master's cows. What season did not afford some object 
 of a boy's pursuit — eggs, apples, and nuts ? 
 
 A case at the Blandford Jan. Session, in 1626, no doubt 
 excited great interest. 
 
 John Dibsdale, late of Langton, in Dorset, clothier, de- 
 ceased, had placed his daughter Dorothy, two years before 
 this event, with Mrs. Roche, the wife of Mr. Roche, parson 
 of Helton, for the term of five years from thence, to be by 
 her bred up and taught her needle, and gave Mrs. Roche 15/. 
 
400 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 for his said daughter's teaching and diet, and was to provide 
 apparel for her during the term. 
 
 Mr. Thomas White, of Langton, clerk, uncle to the said 
 Dorothy, detained her from Mrs. Koche, who applied to the 
 Court to order Mr. White to send back Dorothy for her 
 term, or else to give her some compensation. 
 
 The Court, judging that the contract between Mr. John 
 Dibsdale and Mrs. Roche was for the placing of Dorothy to 
 be taught as a scholar, and not to be employed as a servant, 
 did not think fit to make any order for the relief of Mrs. 
 Roche.* 
 
 What could generally be expected from such a conunence- 
 ment of schooling, we wiU not dignify it by the name of 
 education, as obtained about the middle and close of the 
 seventeenth century at Winchester ? 
 
 A child six years old was sent, not to the school in the 
 college, but to the care of a Mr. May, a fellow of the college, 
 who boarded the child. The little boy had no master, but 
 Was taught at his boarding-house, for it virtually was such, 
 with other gentlemen's sons, by a select number of the 
 SENIOR BOTS, who Were to give an account to Dr. Burt, the 
 master of the school, by turns, how these children behaved 
 themselves, and what progress they made in learning. This 
 system was followed for two years, when the boy of eight 
 entered the school, and removed to college between the age 
 of sixteen and seventeen. 
 
 This early school, and subsequently college career, fur- 
 nish matter for much comment by any one who has made the 
 science of education his study, f 
 
 The scholars at our large schools had regular cockfights. 
 John Richards, Esq. went, in the year 1700, to see the 
 scholars at Wimborne cock-fight. | 
 
 Cock-fighting would appear to have been an affair of the 
 school, recognised by the masters, and the charges for which 
 
 * Mr. T. Hearn, "Qui Quondam." 
 
 f Private Memoirs of John Potenger, Esq. Edited by the Rev. C. 
 W. Bingham, &c. 
 J Diary in the New Retrospective Review. 
 
DANCING-SCHOOL. — CHARGES. 401 
 
 were defrayed by them, to be hereafter paid by the parents, 
 just as some innocent excursions and festivities are managed 
 now-a-days. The credit of the school was without doubt 
 often involved in the proper issue of the fight. 
 
 Sir James Mackintosh, when at school at Fortrose in 
 1776-7, had this entry in his account, in which books were 
 charged 3s. Gd. : — 
 
 To cocks'-flght dues for 2 years, 2s. 6d. each, 5s. 
 
 Associated are three months' fees at the dancing-school, 
 minuet, country-dances, and hornpipe, &c.* 
 
 At some of our western endowed grammar schools the 
 charges for board were, a century ago, very, indeed sur- 
 prisingly low. Parents who wonder at this need to be told 
 that the morning and evening draught, two meals of the 
 day, had ceased, and no tea morning or evening had been 
 substituted in their place, except at an extra charge. The 
 fare was mean and scanty. Old women cake-sellers in the 
 neighbourhood of the school house prepared tea and coffee, 
 boiled eggs, and fryed rashers of bacon from a flitch which 
 they kept hung up, and which had been sent by the parents 
 from home. Dinner was the single meal taken at the mas- 
 ter's table, who really furnished only partial board, in ac- 
 cordance with the practice of the day. 
 
 Firing was charged to a young lady, a boarder in a school 
 at Richmond, from September to April, in 1646, the sum of 
 19s. Gd. 
 
 In 1697 the board and education at our western grammar 
 schools was 121. a year. Everything was just one-third the 
 price it now bears, and the fare is now excellent and abun- 
 dant. 
 
 Dancing was charged at the rate of a guinea the quarter, 
 and a guinea entrance. 
 
 The beginning dinner at some schools with pudding has 
 been supposed to be the invention of some stingy school- 
 master. The same custom is found among the natives of 
 
 * Notes and <Jueries, No. 271. 
 D D 
 
402 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Suffolk and neighbouring counties to this day. In Tudor 
 reigns dinners commenced with pudding ; hence pudding-time 
 means the nick of time, or just at the right time.* 
 
 Presents of articles of food were customarily made by the 
 parents to the master, and at female schools to the mistress. 
 In the latter-mentioned establishments scanty fare was com- 
 plained of with great reason, but not the same amount of 
 justice ; for the terms were not adequate to enable a whole- 
 some set of meals to be furnished throughout the year with- 
 out a loss. 
 
 Cheap board for pupils was not a too scanty supply of 
 good food, but an abundance of food that the young could 
 not eat. The same plan is followed now-a-day in cheap 
 schools. 
 
 Sir Symonds D'Ewes experienced this scanty fare at 
 Wambrook, near Chard, which occasioned his not returning 
 to continue his studies in the west. 
 
 The late E.ev. Sydney Smith said of Winchester school, 
 when presided over by Dr. Joseph Warton, that it was one 
 system of abuse, neglect, and vice. The food was coarse and 
 insufficient, so that he often suffered from absolute hunger. 
 His younger brother Courtenay twice ran away to escape the 
 miseries of the place. 
 
 Running away, now hardly known, was once present to 
 the mind of every school boy, and numbers had recourse to 
 it on the first grievance. 
 
 The practice of the colleges or grammar schools in France 
 in this century may in one particular be found illustrative of 
 this subject. At the college of Valognes, in the year 1816, 
 there was in the refectory ordinary room a long table, in the 
 centre of which sat the masters on either side. Above them 
 sat the boarders, or full boarders, who had every meal found 
 them in the establishment. Below sat a class of boys who 
 paid very little, and who had partial board. At dinner a 
 basin of soup or broth was set before the latter as before the 
 full boarders, but this was all. They tasted neither fish, 
 
 * See Wlthal's Dictionarie, 1608. 
 
PUNISHMENT OF YOUNG STUDENTS. 403 
 
 meat, nor fruit, but sat at table eyeing the busy scene till the 
 full boarders had finished their dinner or supper ; for these 
 two meals, the one at half-past twelve, the other at seven, 
 strictly resembled each other. 
 
 This mode of living probably resembled that in practice in 
 England. The partial boarders made up for the scantiness 
 of their food at table by recourse to supplies from home, and 
 those to be purchased at shops, articles of food privately 
 dressed by the cook, &c. 
 
 That corporal chastisement was practised at school is not 
 to be wondered at, as it was in vogue everywhere. Parental 
 authority was maintained in the same manner ; children of 
 both sexes were subjected to corporal chastisement so long 
 as they continued under the paternal roof. 
 
 The making birch rods for great schools is an occupation 
 that requires but little time. Horsing is no longer the sub- 
 ject of daily conversation. 
 
 Till very recently, and possibly even now in some scholastic 
 establishments belonging to the Catholics in this country, the 
 ferula was administered in a manner likely to correct false 
 grammar and false quantities, and at the same time to inspire 
 a hatred of Saints' names, if not of more. Each blow was 
 given accompanied by the name of some Saint of the Romish 
 calendar, as if he required to be propitiated for an offence 
 specially offered. 
 
 A " breeching boy " was the customary member of every 
 royal establishment where a young scion of royalty or nobi- 
 lity was receiving education. This was the scape-goat, the 
 sufferer of the punishment merited by his noble co-student 
 whom he stimulated to exertion, and for whose short-comings 
 he smarted. The reigns of Charles I. of England, and of 
 Louis XV. of France, saw a termination of this practice. 
 Each royal or noble offender may go unpunished, but injus- 
 tice no longer prevails; vicarious whippings are no more. 
 The royal parent vindicates authority, and corrects incipient 
 error. 
 
 Could youth but know the advantages they possess beyond 
 what boys could once command, how deep should their grati- 
 
 DD 2 
 
404 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES, 
 
 tude be ! Each boy in a class now possesses a beautiful 
 printed book, his dictionary, his treasure and store-house. 
 Was this always so ? No, assuredly not so. In the records 
 of the Boston corporation, a.d. 1578, is an entry of the 
 agreement, " That a dictionary should be bought for the 
 scollers of the Free Scole ; and the same boke to be tyed in 
 a cheyne, and set upon a deske in the scoole, whereunto any 
 scollar may have )accesse as occasion shall serve." * 
 
 How must the little and weak have been impeded in their 
 search into the " ample page " of knowledge, when it pleased 
 the big, and perchance the brutal, to keep the front place ! 
 The labour about the dictionary must have been galling and 
 too often fruitless, unless under vigilant inspection one boy 
 was made to turn out for the class. 
 
 The relation between master and pupils was very dilFerent 
 from what now so happily obtains. The master was a 
 ruler, whose rules and government were disputed by his 
 subjects. Faction engaged their thoughts too often more 
 than study. Affection between the parties was rare, mutual 
 hatred was common ; hostility too often was unintermitted. 
 The history of too many schools would be one of rebellious 
 conduct, tyranny, and riotous outbreak. 
 
 In the days of corporation exclusiveness in some schools, 
 none but the sons of freemen were admitted to the higher 
 school ; the sons of foreigners or aliens — meaning those not 
 free of the borough — were doomed to an inferior position. 
 The fine mind was checked in its aspirations. What must 
 have been the bitter regret of genius thus arrested in a career 
 that was fuU of hope ? 
 
 The schoolmaster, half a century ago, figured in an unami- 
 able light compared with his successors. He knew, and was 
 paid to transmit. What he knew he deemed to be honour- 
 able, gentlemanlike, patrician, and in no one particular ple- 
 beian or vulgar. What came under this designation in- 
 cluded in general terms no physical science, which he 
 branded as philosophy ; no arithmetic in any shape or form, 
 
 * Notes and Queries. P. Thompson. 
 
DECEPTION OF SCHOOLMASTERS. 405 
 
 no geometry, no geography, no English history, no English 
 reading, poetry, or prose, spelling, and many other subjects. 
 These were treated as utterly vulgar, and unworthy of a 
 master who was a gentleman. An usher called the writing- 
 master did really teach some of these despised matters, for 
 want of which thousands made shipwreck of life ; but as he 
 knew nothing of Latin, and was essentially a plebeian, both 
 the man and his subjects were held in ineffable contempt. 
 
 The master never condescended to converse with those 
 confided to his care. He ruled them for Greek and Latin ; 
 and his appearance was a prelude to correction and punish- 
 ment. 
 
 The development of character, the encouraging good as- 
 pirations, the correction of erroneous views, in a word the 
 man-building, were quite impossible. A baronet found tears 
 gushing from his eyes upon seeing some pupils running up 
 to a master and familiarly conversing with him. He said 
 he had been eight years under the master of a great public 
 school, and had never exchanged one syllable with his well- 
 paid instructor in Greek, Latin, and versification. Eight 
 years' falsely styled education ! What might not have been 
 effected in that time for the improvement or the correction 
 of each pupil? 
 
 The neglect of writing and arithmetic in the grammar 
 schools was compensated in the writing and more mixed 
 schools by pieces setting forth the marvels of penmanship 
 with flourishes and strikes. Maps were worked up that had 
 occupied a quarter of the year, to the exclusion or nearly so 
 of study or mental exercises by those who never had to do 
 with a map the rest of their lives. These were deceptions 
 practised upon ignorant parents. 
 
 The writing schoolmaster, in his prospectus of terms, 
 generally contrived to include as many branches of know- 
 ledge or accomplishments as were known. 
 
 The relation between masters and boys at our great public 
 schools involved, generally speaking, as was understood, no 
 religious responsibilities. When Dr. Butler, of Shrewsbury 
 School, was addressed by a parent who complained of the 
 
 D D 3 
 
406 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEKN COUNTIES. 
 
 deterioration of his son's morals, he replied, " My business is 
 to teach him Greek, and not morality." Chapels have lately 
 been built, and sermons preached and published, some of 
 which the Quarterly Review calls mere advertising puffs of 
 the schools from which they emanate. 
 
 Viewing the other side of the picture, the gentle treat- 
 ment followed in so many schools of the present day, it can- 
 not be concealed that the ordinary difficulties of learning 
 arrest the progress of the majority ; an effeminacy of mind 
 is the result ; discipline is notoriously bad, and very many 
 lose their chance of success in life, and sink into a bad state 
 of mental inactivity and irreclaimable inefficiency and insig- 
 nificance, perhaps of vice, all from the want of some slight 
 personal correction. 
 
 There is much interesting matter in the following expenses 
 of a young lady's school at Richmond, in 1646, found among 
 some papers by Ev. Ph. Shirley, Esq.* : — 
 
 The Account for Peggi/s Disbursements since her going to 
 Schoole at Michmond, being in Sept. 1646. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Payd for a louehood - - - - - 2 6 
 
 For cariing the truncke to Queenhithe - - 8 
 
 For cariing it to Hammersmith - - - - 1 
 
 Payd for two pair of shoes ■ - - 4 
 
 Payd for a singing booke - - - 1 
 
 Given to Mrs. Jervoise's maid - - - 1 
 
 Payd for a hairlace and a pair of showstrings - 1 
 
 For an inckhorne ... 04 
 
 For faggots, 2s. Sd. ; and cleaving of wood, \2d. - 3 8 
 
 For 9 li. of soape, 2s. Ad. ; and starch, Ad. - 2 8 
 
 For hookes and a bolt for the door - - - 9 
 
 For sugar and licorish - - - - - 1 4 
 
 For silke and thread - - - - 6 
 
 For 31i. of soape, lie?.; and starch, Ad., and carrying 
 
 letters, 6d. - - - - - - 1 9 
 
 For 3 li. of soape, 12rf., and starch, 4rf. - - - 1 4 
 
 For sugar, Ucorich, and coultsfoot - 16 
 
 "■ Xotes and Queries, April 14. 1855. 
 
mSBUESEMENTS. — MUSICIANS. 407 
 
 For a necklace, 12(i., for a m. of pins, 12(/. 
 
 For a pair of cands (candles ?), 6d, for muckadine, Ad., for 
 wormsend (worsted), 2d. - . . - 
 
 For showstrings, 6d., for going on errrands, 6d. - 
 
 For 3 li. of soape, \2d., for starch, 4rf., for thread and 
 silk, 4rf. - .... 
 
 For a bason, Ad., for carrying letters, Qd., for tape, 4rf. 
 
 For soap, \2d., for starch, 4rf., for goin on errands, 6c?. 
 
 For a pair of pattins, \s. 6d., for three pair of shoes, 6s. - 
 
 For callico to line her stockins, 2d., for showstrings, Ad. 
 
 For 3 li. of soape, 12d., for a pint of white wine, Ad. 
 
 For ale, 3d., for ;|li. of sugar, 8d. ... 
 
 For a m. of pins, 12d., for a corle and one pair of half- 
 handed gloves, 8d. ..... 
 
 Given to the writing mr. .... 
 
 For silver for the toothpick case - - . - 
 
 For silke, 12rf., for a toothpick case, Ad. - 
 
 For a sampler, 12rf. ; for thread, needles, paper, pins, and 
 parchment, SOd. ..... 
 
 For a pair of shoes, 2s. 2d. ; for ribbon, 3c?. 
 
 For soape, 19d. ; for starch. Ad. ; for cariing a letter. Ad. 
 
 To the waterman bringing the (box ?) to Kichmond 
 
 For shoestrings, 6d. ; for a purge, 18c?. - 
 
 For bringing the box from Richmond 
 
 For a coach from Fleete Streete .... 
 
 For wood to this time - - . - . 
 
 Totall disbursements to this 15th day of Aprill, 
 
 1647, is - - - - - 3 18 5 
 
 In country towns, seventy years ago, music was a rare 
 accomplishment. There were few opportunities for learning. 
 At Lyme there was not a piano in the whole town. There 
 were musicians, and there were the church singers, who 
 valued their musical acquirements at no mean rate, accord- 
 ing to the cosmopolitan plan in the ratio of the supply. At 
 length a blind musical teacher came from Martock, who rode, 
 and had behind him a boy as a guide. Who can now re- 
 member Mr. Westlake ? He was a good teacher, and was in 
 great demand. He would arrive at a country house in the 
 
 1> D 4 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 ■ 2 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 ■ 1 
 
 
 
 ■ 1 
 
 8 
 
 ■ 1 
 
 2 
 
 • 1 
 
 10 
 
 • 7 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 ■ 1 
 
 4 
 
 ■ 
 
 11 
 
 ■ 1 
 
 8 
 
 ■ 2 
 
 6 
 
 • 1 
 
 6 
 
 • 1 
 
 4 
 
 ■ 3 
 
 6 
 
 • 2 
 
 5 
 
 1 
 
 8 
 
 • 1 
 
 
 
 • 2 
 
 
 
 ■ 1 
 
 
 
 • 1 
 
 
 
 • 15 
 
 10 
 
408 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 evening, give a lesson that very evening, rise very early and 
 give a second lesson ; then mount for another scene of labour 
 and harmonious usefulness. 
 
 The crowning labour — the highest step in the ladder, 
 some half a century ago, was the " Battle of Prague." Let 
 no one disparage the abUity to perform this fine melange of 
 sounds, — the tramp of cavalry, the firing of great guns, 
 and other musical realisations, 
 
 "We may have fine music, but properly speaking, no finale 
 in which, as in the " Battle of Prague," the force of music 
 could no farther go. That difficult piece was not attained 
 per saltum. There was no royal road to the " Battle of 
 Prague ;" that culminating point was only won by due 
 gradation and professional sequence. 
 
 The sampler, with patterns of letters, long held its place 
 in girls' schools. There was a posy at the end, and its 
 destiny was to be framed and glazed, as a memento of in- 
 dustry and acquirements in the use of the needle. The 
 sampler was, with females, what a " piece " was among boys. 
 It delighted, and too often deceived the parents. The 
 " piece " was a large sheet of paper with ornamental border 
 around a space intended to be filled with fine penmanship, 
 and often with finer sentiment. How much sound learning 
 was sacrificed for the preparing the " piece ! " It has fallen 
 into merited disrepute, and deservedly so. Sound learning 
 was made to yield to caligraphy or fanciful penmanship, — 
 an unprofitable acquirement to the ninety-nine of every 
 hundred. 
 
 Wearing Arms. 
 
 The change efiected when our countrymen disused the 
 habitual wearing of arms was remarkable; and its effect 
 upon society at large cannot well be sufficiently estimated. 
 Too many of our forefathers drank at times to excess. 
 
DEATH OF WILLIAM BULL. 409 
 
 When it was the custom to wear arms, upon any affront 
 being offered at a church-ale, a bull-baiting, or at church 
 particularly, men drew upon each other as readily as their 
 faulty descendants now resent any personal indignity by a 
 blow with the fist. 
 
 A quarrelsome man, who is " a striker," is now-a-days a 
 nuisance on any public occasion, and causes confusion, till 
 secured by the constables and peaceably disposed. What in- 
 tolerable annoyance must a brawling, drunken, armed man 
 have proved himself ! Constables made such characters the 
 subject of their presentments at the court leets. A fu- 
 rious, passionate man ran a risk of being described like 
 Henry Davy, by the Lyme constables as, periculosum et 
 irregulatum et pronum homines ad eos ledend' et nocend' 
 (a dangerous and unruly character, ready to hurt and injure 
 other men).* These officials were generally pithy in their 
 entries, e.g. : — " John Guppy, killing Henry Seymour," 
 " Williams, killing a soldier," " John Way, drawing blood 
 of a stranger." Two men had fought respectively " with 
 sword and staff (that is, quarter-staff), and "intended to pro- 
 secute their lewd purpose." 
 
 John Brewer killed William Bull at Castle Combe with 
 a sword, a.d. 1524, and then ran to the church. He spoke 
 with the coroner, abjured the realm, chose a port beyond 
 sea by Dover, and forfeited all his goods and chattels to 
 the lord of the manor, "f 
 
 Such matters were appropriately returned by the con- 
 stables as " bloodsheds." In 1569 the Mayor of Lyme 
 paid to Wm. Merchant for healing the Fleming's head, and 
 three days his meat and drink, 20«?. 
 
 The evils arising from going about armed were acknow- 
 ledged. King Henry VII. issued a proclamation upon the 
 subject. Though our countrymen were allowed to be armed 
 when they travelled through the wilds of imcultivated Eng- 
 land, still at other times they were not to be so. 
 
 * Presentment, a.d. 1601. 
 
 f Hist, of that Manor by Hon. P. Scrope. 
 
410 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 The king, out of respect to the surety, peace, and rest- 
 fulness of all his subjects, forbad the wearing any bills, 
 bows, and arrows, swords, long nor short bucklers, nor any 
 other harness nor weapons invasive, in any town or city, but 
 at such times as men journey or ride, upon pain of for- 
 feiture of the weapons and imprisonment. 
 
 No man, of whatever rank, was to make any affray or 
 quarrel with any other person. 
 
 After this proclamation country corporations began to 
 stir to carry out the wishes of the king. At Leicester, in 
 this reign (Henry VII.), making an affray was viewed as a 
 serious matter. Should blood have been shed, the fine was 
 Gs. 8d. ; without blood, 3s. Ad. No one was to leave his 
 house after the nine o'clock bell had rung, except officers 
 and the watch, or forfeit \2d. ; 2s. for the second offence, 
 and for the third offence to suffer imprisonment. The 
 Mayor of Leicester, Richard GyUott, made an order in 
 1467, that no one in town should bear any weapon except 
 in support of the mayor in case of an affray, so that the 
 mayor had in such an event to arm and lead in person 
 against the rioters; a knight or an esquire might have a 
 sword borne after him. Every countryman was to leave his 
 weapon at his inn, before going about his business in fair 
 or market, and every innkeeper was bidden, at Leicester and 
 in other boroughs, to give warning to his customers to do 
 so. If they wore their weapon it was to be forfeited, and 
 the offender's body was to lie in prison as long as the mayor 
 liked. No townsman was to lend a countryman any weapon, 
 except it was to be used in support of the mayor.* 
 
 At Marlborough there was a bye-law made for the spe- 
 cial subject: — 
 
 " XXV. Every inhabitant shall have in readiness in his shop 
 or other place where he has ready access, a club, bill, or other 
 necessary weapon, that he or his servants may be in readiness to 
 assist the authorities in suppressing any outcry or breach of the 
 peace." f 
 
 * Gutch's Coll. Curioso.— Nicholl's Hist of Leicester. 
 f Wajlen's Hist, of Marlborough. 
 
COSTUME. — FIGHTS IN THE CHUKCII. 411 
 
 Kabelais gives a minute description of the dresses of this 
 period, and satirises the custom now first introduced of going 
 about armed; every one, he tells us, carrying "la belle 
 epee au cot^, la poign6e dor^e, le fourreau de velours de la 
 couleur des chausses, le bont d'or et d'orfevrerie, le poig- 
 nard de mSme." * 
 
 Mankind do not usually burden themselves with that 
 which they do not intend to use. The wearing of arms 
 was no exception. Well might citizens be bidden to pro- 
 vide themselves with weapons to put down a fray, for such 
 was what many gloried in, particularly in public places. 
 
 When publicity was the object, no place could be so 
 suitable for a fight as the interior of a church, or a church- 
 yard, when parishioners were assembled at the church hatch, 
 or else in city, or at market. The proclamation of 3 & 4 
 Philip and Mary, 27 March, 1557, complains how certain 
 quarrelsome persons, both naughty and insolent, provided 
 themselves with swords and rapiers of a much greater 
 length than had been accustomed to be used, and wore 
 gaimtlets and vambraces as weU as bucklers, with long 
 pikes in them, to be ready for a quarrel, riot, or fray, 
 which they sought, as before said, at church, in the church- 
 yard, &c. 
 
 Churches were not then covered with pews, and aflTorded 
 an open space for a fight, or a theatrical performance. 
 There many deaths and wounds had been dealt. 
 
 These long rapiers, exceeding a yard and half a quarter 
 at the blade, were to be broken ; for they appear to have 
 been worn for duelling. A dagger was not to exceed twelve 
 inches at the blade. 
 
 In 1616 James I. prohibited, by proclamation, the wear- 
 ing of steelets, or pocket daggers — dagges, or pocket pistols, 
 which were used in duelling.! 
 
 The being restrained in the use of offensive weapons 
 
 * Handbook to Renaissance Court. — Court of the Crystal Palace 
 by J. Waring, 
 t Nicholl's Leicester, temp. Elizabeth. 
 
412 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 was deemed an indignity by the proud and quarrelsome 
 Swash-bucklers of that day. They were not all willing to 
 submit to such a degradation. 
 
 So late as Oct. 1854, a jury of freemen at Lyme Regis 
 appeared to consider the conduct of a brother freeman. It 
 was solemnly given to them " in charge to inquire if Nicho- 
 las Hassard hath made a breach of his liberty for his dis- 
 obedience, for he being commanded by the mayor to lay 
 down his weapons, and not to wear them in the street, he 
 hath denyed to lay them down." 
 
 " Also he thrust or shouldered Mr. Mayor yesterday 
 night, as Mr. Mayor came by the walke," the space under 
 the old custom house, opposite the Assembly Rooms. Ni- 
 cholas Hassard forfeited his freedom.* 
 
 The individual so punished belonged doubtless to a class 
 who viewed novelties with an evil eye, and who feared that 
 degeneracy could result from some recent introductions. 
 The Swiss were enjoined, about the year 1627, not to 
 neglect to gird on the sword when they went to church, 
 nor to effeminate themselves by the use of tea and coffee.f 
 
 Local history abounds with episodes of the evils of men 
 wearing arms. An instance is adduced from Lyme. 
 
 The year 1592 was rendered memorable by a melan- 
 choly occurrence in the open street. Nicholas Ellesdon, 
 one of the Serjeants, arrested a merchant residing at Dow- 
 lands, named John Seward, at the suit of one Belpit, of 
 "Weymouth, which Seward, in his anger, killed the officer, 
 who was only discharging his duty, and who fell a victim 
 to the practice of wearing arms. In the Hustings' Book 
 for the year the affair appears at length, and it is stated, 
 " the which odious act, by all presumption, happened the 
 rather through the want of clubs in the town; for the 
 having of clubs might be an occasion to restrain such lewd 
 attempts by terrifying such blood-thirsty persons." Clubs 
 not less than seven feet in length were ordered to be pro- 
 
 * See the Freemen's Book, p. 290. 
 
 •}• Historical Pictures of the Middle Ages in Black and White, by 
 Mrs. K. Moore. 
 
SWOKDSMEN. — ORGIES OF THE MOHOCKS, 413 
 
 vided, and in skilful hands proved no doubt, as quarter 
 staves, very efficient weapons. A dexterous practiser of 
 the quarter-staff would bid defiance to any man. A 
 western gentleman, with this weapon, fought at Xeres, in 
 Spain, against three rapiers and poniards. Judge Ander- 
 son, a well-known character, pronounced that the killing 
 the Serjeant in the street was not murder, but manslaughter ; 
 because he had not procured a warrant from the mayor. 
 
 No pages or lacqueys were to wear swords, as by a pro- 
 clamation in the year 1661. 
 
 The wearing of arms was in general use at the begin- 
 ning of the eighteenth century. Dissoluteness and the 
 sword had fierceness lent to them by drink. The sword 
 clubs were suppressed by a royal proclamation in 1724. 
 For full particulars of the bravos of the reign of George 
 I., and how Beau Nash exerted himself at Bath, see the 
 Gent's Mag. for Sept. 1852, for an article by Dr. Doran. 
 
 Persons in the United States of America going to co- 
 loured balls are required to leave their weapons below. 
 Upon a row happening parties hand them up, if called upon 
 to do so. 
 
 The Mohocks, about 1720, when they sallied out upon 
 their nightly orgies, wore their weapons, as we learn that 
 one branch of that fraternity — the " Dancing-Masters " — 
 made persons dance about, by running the points of their 
 swords into their legs. Whole parties of these men, very 
 drunk, would rush forward in the streets of London with 
 their swords drawn, which they used against the un- 
 offending. 
 
 Haydn, the composer, played at concerts with a tie wig 
 on, and wearing a sword by his side. He died so late as 
 1809. 
 
414 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Sumptuary Laws of Di'ess and Expenditure. 
 
 In very ancient times men were compelled by law to re- 
 gulate their expenditure in various ways, and particularly 
 their dress, according to their rank and their means. 
 
 The officer who took account of such matters at Rome, 
 that is, the Censor, held the sumptuary rate-book, the 
 Census ; and he judged by that roll what display in living 
 or in dress was allowable to each individual. The several 
 classes of the community were distinct from one another ; 
 and each had distinct privileges in the eye of the State. 
 
 In order to keep separate the several orders of men or 
 classes, rules were prescribed for each, to regulate their 
 expenditure, their dress, the number of funeral piles that 
 might be lighted, and for various purposes. A part of 
 these, when attentively considered, are found to have been 
 social, a part sumptuary, strictly so called, and some 
 political. 
 
 When in modern times our soverigns and our local muni- 
 cipal bodies turned their attention to the regulating every 
 action in daily life of their subjects and fellow townsmen, 
 there was scarcely anything that did not become the subject 
 matter of proclamations or municipal orders and precepts. 
 Some of these openly assailed expensive habits, and regulated 
 the value of the materials any one might wear in garments 
 according to his income. Such were true sumptuary laws, 
 and an imitation of those of the times of the Roman history. 
 Other proclamations wear the semblance of having been dic- 
 tated by the peculiar taste or fancy of the sovereign. Most 
 profess to regard the welfare of the state and the subject. 
 
 Now that every one is left to dress in whatever colour or 
 in materials of whatever value the wearer may choose, and 
 the vast population occasions no trouble or concern to any 
 official, but finds ample check in ridicule against bad taste, 
 and in distress against too prodigal a style of dress or living, 
 it seems strange how so many laws about dress, &c. could 
 have been required. It may be remarked that they were 
 
COSTUME IN JAMES I.'S TIME. 
 
 415 
 
 deemed to have been necessary three centuries and a half 
 ago. 
 
 Henry VII. saw occasion to restrain the nobles. Lord 
 Bacon tells us of that king's visit to the Earl of Oxford. 
 That nobleman had given his livery to an excessive number 
 of retainers to do honour to his royal guest ; who, however, 
 determined, when leaving, not to overlook the breach of the 
 sumptuary laws, but referred him to the Attorney-General, 
 and bade him compound for the penalties incurred — a return 
 which Mr. John Bruce deems not to have been that of a 
 king, but of an informer. 
 
 Costume of the Reign of James I. 
 
 King Henry VIII. and Queen Mary had found it neces- 
 sary to have recourse to sumptuary laws for the good of the 
 state and the individual. An extract from one of these 
 surprising and important proclamations will throw light upon 
 the subject. 
 
 " The excess of apparel, and the superfluity of unnecessary 
 foreign wares thereto belonging, attracted the attention of 
 Queen Elizabeth, who foresaw the decay of the wealth of 
 
416 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 the realm by sending so much to foreign countries for the 
 purchase of costly articles of attire ; but her majesty con- 
 sidered likewise the wasting and undoing of a great number 
 of young gentlemen, otherwise serviceable, and others seek- 
 ing, by show of apparel, to be esteemed as gentlemen ; who, 
 alluredj by the vain show of those things, did not only con- 
 sume themselves, their goods and lands which their parents 
 had left unto them, but also run into such debts and shifts, 
 as they cannot live out of danger of laws, without attempt- 
 ing unlawful acts whereby they are not any ways serviceable 
 to their country as otherwise they might be." 
 
 In the following reign an aspirant to a lady's favour found 
 that a suitable wardrobe for the occasion cost more than lOOL, 
 and this for one not noble. Dogberry modestly boasted that 
 he was a man that had " two gowns." A great personage 
 had gowns of multitudinous colours and materials, and 
 doublets and hose of great value. Clothing was very 
 costly. 
 
 "We should dislike, in the present day, to have our in- 
 comes ascertained in an inquisitorial manner, in order that 
 the authorities might settle whether we might wear or not 
 sarcenet in the lining of our doublet. AVhen the articles 
 used in the making of our garments were to be regulated 
 by the amount of our income, the ascertaining this point was 
 indispensable. 
 
 Those who could spend 40Z. a year might wear sarcenet 
 in the lining of their hose, doublet, hats, or caps. 
 
 Apprentices at the law, and utter barristers, and all mer- 
 chants of any society, and all that keep household in city or 
 town, and such as may dispend 20/. a year, might wear a 
 welf of velvet in their gowns, jackets, or coats.* 
 
 None were to wear spurs, swords, rapiers, daggers, skaynes, 
 wood knives or hangers, buckles or girdles, silvered or da- 
 masked, except knights' and barons' sons, and others of high 
 degree or place, and gentlemen in ordinary attendance upon 
 
 * Proclamation of 1579. 
 
WEARING APPAREL. — FINES. 417 
 
 the queen's majesty's person, except gilt, silvered, or da- 
 masked spurs.* 
 
 No husbandman was to wear in hia doublet any other 
 thing than that which is wrought within this realm, fustian 
 and canvass only excepted. 
 
 No serving man or journeyman in handicrafts taking 
 wages might wear in his doublet any other thing than fus- 
 tian, canvass, leather, or woollen cloth. 
 
 If offending, the apparel was to be forfeited, or the value 
 thereof, and 3s. 4kd. a day fine for every day he should have 
 worn the same, f 
 
 Excessive long cloaks In common sight monstrous, and 
 great and excessive ruffs insupportable for charges, and in- 
 decent to be worn, were to be left off. 
 
 These ruffs were not to be more than a nail in depth. 
 
 These matters are adduced as examples, but in fact the 
 proclamations about sumptuary regulations would fill pages. 
 From the highest rank to the individual in humble station 
 there was some rule applicable ; there was something that 
 might and might not be worn. Attentively studied, the 
 persons that passed might have their rank discovered ; each 
 wore what was equivalent to a badge. Twelve persons of 
 various grades might now each wear a badge with a number, 
 and at a glance the most ignorant could appreciate their re- 
 lative rank, and perhaps income. Such would be a ready 
 mode ; formerly the same object was effected by the regu- 
 lations of dress. Such is no longer the case. Modem views 
 repudiate such a plan. Many possessed of very different 
 means, the rich land and fundholder, the party living by a 
 profession or a business, dress in the same style, use the same 
 materials, but perhaps differ much in taste. No fur, no silk 
 is forbidden, A legacy which improves the income of a 
 family, or many little adventitious circumstances occurring, 
 cause no necessary change of habiliments. Information of 
 the fact spreads, but no visible sign announces to the passer 
 
 * Proclamation of 1579. f Ibid. 
 
 E E 
 
418 SOCIAL HISTOET OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 by that income has improved, some municipal or other office 
 has been undertaken, or any other remarkable personal occur- 
 rence supervened. A fusion of the members of society 
 seems to have taken place, stUl, when we look at it with 
 keen glance, the distinctions exist as of old ; but they are 
 not blazoned by sarcenet or welf of velvet. Each individual, 
 in matter of attire and expense, is left to his own self-govern- 
 ment, and each member of society is no longer a machine 
 moved at the will of another, but is self guided, and so dis- 
 plays the result of his taste, his judgment, and prudence, or 
 the want of those things. Personal liberty could not have 
 been exercised or enjoyed while sumptuary laws were in 
 force. A change for the better has taken place, though some 
 are occasionally heard to admire a social state of things, 
 under which those who dress to excess would have been 
 checked or altogether restrained. Varieties of dress, ordered 
 to distinguish the classes of society, partake of the continental 
 or even Oriental character ; liberty in dress is consonant with 
 Anglo-Saxon or western feelings and sentiment. 
 
 The regulations for the dress of the members of our 
 universities were very numerous. Hats, stufFed-out or bom- 
 basted breeches, liosen with only a yard and a half of cloth in 
 them — all was laid down or forbidden by rule. 
 
 Apprentices were to wear no long or short wigs above 15s. 
 in value, and no point lace. 
 
 The most pious of men, a learned and witty writer 
 observed, were not above some regard for fashion, even with 
 reference to very small matters. 
 
 Men once gave their minds, to create by means of dress 
 and other insignia, a distinction between each class. 
 Whether this was the result of rank or worldly means, 
 they judged such a course to be necessary. It was a prin- 
 ciple of action not only followed before the public, but 
 sedulously attended to in hours of privacy. Thus, in the 
 days of Elizabeth and James, no Puritan divine ever went 
 to bed but with his head in a night-cap of black silk tipped 
 with white. Under the same sovereigns doctors of medicine 
 
TYRANNY OF THE SUMPTUARY LAWS. 419 
 
 and privy councillors sank to sleep in night-caps wrought 
 with gold silk.* 
 
 Sumptuary laws are spoken of as instances of tyranny 
 and oppression on the part of the sovereign upon his 
 unwUling and reluctant subjects. Nothing can be further 
 from the truth. Sumptuary laws only stamped with au- 
 thority, regulations about distinction of classes, &c., that 
 society demanded of itself, and would have reflected upon 
 a ruler that did not give heed to and enforce them. The 
 juries of townsmen in boroughs clamoured for cucking-stool, 
 pillory, and other implements of punishment. When these 
 were wanting, the juries presented the authorities as " faulty." 
 They judged the use of these things to be salutary, and so 
 they did sumptuary laws, and that without them all society 
 would be confounded in a kind of ancient chaos. 
 
 The doctors of medicine and privy councillors might, 
 had legislators continued to pass sumptuary laws, have been 
 called to account, or had a more humble night-cap prescribed 
 for them. Princes wore similar head gear. 
 
 Dr. Doran relates that at the marriage of Frederic Prince 
 of Wales, the son of Greorge II., the royal bridegroom was 
 splendid at night in his robe of gold tissue, and a night-cap 
 wrought with gold sUk. Thus attired, he glided among the 
 crowd of fashionable people who stood in the bedroom to 
 greet the illustrious pair ; and with this marriage went out 
 the unseemly fashion of such public greetings. 
 
 A glance at the passers by in a street will no longer 
 suffice to determine who are the exalted among the male 
 sex, and who belong to somewhat inferior grades. This was 
 easily done when the draper sold the cloth and the trim- 
 mings to the many, which the country or village tailor made 
 up, or, it may be said, disfigured. Now the expert country 
 tailor is his own draper. The style of dress is much im- 
 proved, and town and country become more and more assimi- 
 lated. This is also the case with the several grades ; for a 
 great distinction existed between those who had their clothes 
 
 * Dr. Doran. 
 E E 2 
 
420 SOCIAL HISTORY OP THE SOUTHERN OOITNTIES. 
 
 from town, and the unfortunates doomed to have their 
 persons decorated by a rustic artist. 
 
 The subject leads to an opinion that visiting a circle and 
 the gaieties of many watering places have been impaired 
 by an equalisation in dress and appearance generally. They 
 argue that many rich persons, and those high in station, do 
 not feel the pleasure that formerly arose from intercourse 
 with the less wealthy ; that they feel their province wounded, 
 and themselves spoiled of their honours. In society it is 
 true all nearly dress alike. Still there is much that remains 
 to distinguish besides the broad cloth and the hoop. 
 
 The difficulty in distinguishing by outward appearance 
 has produced great effects upon society. Genteel families 
 are very slow in doing so, or avoid altogether the making 
 new acquaintances till a master of ceremonies or a friend 
 has been able to certify wild's who? Without this 
 precaution individuals widely apart in station would be 
 brought into an intimacy that might be unsuitable and even 
 painful. 
 
 Oh ! what a glorious occasion when the master of the 
 ceremonies led out the beautiful heiress with lappets hang- 
 ing from her head to dance the minuet de la cour, thus 
 heralding to the assembly that the young lady had " come 
 out," or that the matrimonial market had new game for the 
 fortune hunters, who might now advance. Just so in a 
 preceding century, transactions in most markets were for- 
 bidden till after the formal ringing of the market bell. 
 
 The age is charged with a special want of respect for 
 superiors. We trust this is not altogether so. A middle 
 class has extended itself, so that one man nearly treads upon 
 the heel of his neighbour. Formerly between a certain 
 class and the gentry there was a wide gulph. The country 
 gentry, who came to reside in or frequent towns, have un- 
 avoidably perceived the change ; to some it has been 
 disagreeable. Let those who affirm that all distinctions 
 have disappeared only remark clearly what passes around 
 them, and they will perceive a whole series of gradations to 
 be observed, though not signalled by this fur or that point 
 
COCK-FIGHTING AND C0CK-8QTTA1LING. 421 
 
 lace or broad cloth, which, had all dressed in character, 
 would have made classification a very ready matter. 
 
 "We trust that exalted rank and highly cultivated mental 
 abilities meet with true respect. We believe they ever will 
 do so. Bad teaching and bringing up, and other adverse 
 circumstances, are so likely to interfere that all mankind 
 cannot be clever and accomplished. 
 
 Cock-JigMing and Coch-squailing. 
 
 Cock-fighting up to the end of the last century was a very 
 general amusement, and an occasion for gambling. It entered 
 into the occupations of the old and young. Schools had 
 their cock-fights. Travellers agreed with coachmen that 
 they were to wait a night if there was a cock-fight in any 
 town through which they passed. A battle between two 
 cocks had five guineas staked upon it. Fifty guineas, about 
 the year 1760, depended upon the main or odd battle. This 
 made the decision of a " long main " at cock-fighting an im- 
 portant matter. The church bells at times announced the 
 winning of a "long main." Matches were sometimes so 
 arranged as to last the week. When country gentlemen had 
 sat long at table, and the conversation had turned upon the 
 relative merits of their several birds, a cock-fight often re- 
 sulted, as the birds in question were brought for the purpose 
 into the dining-room. 
 
 If apprentices on their parts agreed that they should not 
 be obliged to eat salmon more than twice a week, masters, 
 regarding their interests, stipulated that apprentices should 
 not keep fighting cocks or hunting dogs till they had served 
 seven of their ten years' apprenticeship. 
 
 A carriage has been constructed to contain some cocks of 
 a Cornish breed, which brought the valiant birds to London, 
 drawn by post-horses, for a great match. The expense 
 was 500A 
 
 E E 3 
 
422 SOCIAL HISTOET OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Cock-squailing was the twin sister of cock-fighting. So 
 early as the time of Thomas a Becket the practice was uni- 
 versal, and school-boys had a half-holyday given them to en- 
 joy the sport. 
 
 Cock-squailing was practised in Dorsetshire at Whitsun- 
 tide as well as at Shrovetide. As great was the demand for 
 cocks before the day as for gunpowder before the 5th of No- 
 vember. It was dangerous to pass the streets on Shrove 
 Tuesday amidst the throwing of missiles at the poor birds 
 tied with a string by nearly the whole population. 
 
 Various reasons have been assigned to account for the 
 origin of cock-squaUing, a cruel practice that engaged at 
 Shrovetide our popxdation the whole breadth of the land. 
 What would a New Zealander have thought of this nation 
 when viewing them so engaged. How could he have recon- 
 ciled this amusement with Christianity? Perhaps it is 
 most probable that the crowing of the cock when St. Peter 
 denied Christ had furnished, in brutal ages, an excuse for the 
 practice. The witty Sir Charles Sedley, in an epigram upon 
 " A Cock at Rochester," implies that the race was to suffer 
 this annual barbarity by way of punishment for St. Peter's 
 crime : — 
 
 " May'st thou be punisli'd for St. Peter's crime, 
 And on Shrove Tuesday perish in thy prime." 
 
 The rising generation were not allowed to grow up igno- 
 rant of the rudiments of this vernal display of cruelty. 
 
 When a young couple were blessed with offspring, the 
 mother, while early instilling the rudiments of virtuous in- 
 struction, did not fail to procure the means for early capabi- 
 lity of keeping Shrove Tuesday in an orthodox manner. The 
 village tailor made a cloth representation of a cock, which, 
 being lined with lead, regained an erect position upon being 
 knocked down by the juvenile cock-squailer. To practise 
 upon a living bird was but the next step in the art. Mothers 
 do occasionally employ the tailor, but are ashamed to own 
 the use and design of the gay appendage to the dresser. 
 The ornamental bird, thanks to better feeling, is now a play- 
 
BOWLING-6EEENS. 423 
 
 thing. The lovely groups of children that are seen in our 
 path-fields keep May in as marked a manner as when each 
 bore an impaled cockchafer.* 
 
 Cock-pence are still paid in some grammar schools to the 
 master as a perquisite on Shrove Tuesday. 
 
 Young people regularly brought their cocks to school on 
 a Shrove Tuesday. When at college in France in 1816, 
 there was some vestige of cock-squaUing by way of lottery. 
 Each boy who squalled paid two sous, and he who killed the 
 bird had it to be cooked for his dinner. This was desirable 
 to those who sat at table without partaking of more than 
 soup or pottage ; others did not care about entering for the 
 chance, except some who were ambitious of being thought 
 to take a good aim.f 
 
 Bowling- Cheens. 
 
 " Our bows are turned into bowls." 
 
 Stow's exclamation. 
 
 Bowling was one of the games proscribed for many years, 
 not from any fault found with the recreation itself, but be- 
 cause, when bowling, the youths of England must have neg- 
 lected archery. When the Butts stood in compliance with 
 the act, but neglected as to the shooting at them with bows 
 and arrows. Bowling had become odious in the eyes of the 
 Puritans of our boroughs, in common with all other diver- 
 sions. The Restoration brought forth all mirth and pas- 
 times. Bowling-greens became the rage, and there the 
 gentry of both sexes met together to bowl, to dine, and to 
 dance, to walk, and engage in conversation. When Beau Nash 
 began his reign at Bath in 1748, the only place for assembling 
 was in the Bowling-green. In Charles II. 's reign there 
 
 * See an article upon cruelty in the Author's Life of the Duke of 
 Monmouth, 2 vols. 8vo. 
 
 t The sport which kings loved, and for which cock-pits were erected, 
 is now illegal. 
 
 EE 4 
 
424 SOCIAL HISTORY OP THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 were two days in the week in the joyous summer season, 
 when there was a club meeting of the "best of the town" of 
 Lyme to dine at the'bowlrng-green in the middle of the day, 
 and recreate themselves with bowls. The Duke of Mon- 
 mouth, upon arriving at any town where he wanted to show 
 himself, rode with his party round the bowling-green, where 
 the gay folks of both sexes were. At Tunbridge Wells, 
 when the Duke did not hunt, he went to the bowling-green, 
 where the gentry were wont to bowl and dance. A taste 
 for the recreation of bowling, and for assembling and dining 
 in company at a bowling-green, has passed away. In most 
 towns the once gay locality has been applied to its original 
 purpose — pasturage — no one being found to rent it. 
 
 The Manner of collecting Information from the Country on 
 Emergencies by the Court, in early Reigns, illustrated. 
 
 When local knowledge was requisite for the due adminis- 
 tration of public affairs on an emergency, individuals who 
 were presumed to possess that knowledge used to be sum- 
 moned to appear at the court or at Westminster. Sometimes, 
 as obtains iu the present day, magistrates, the representatives 
 of commissioners, visited the parts where the information 
 lay, and interrogated the parties on the spot. 
 
 The principle followed in the above particulars is identicaL 
 Even varying circumstances caused the parties questioned 
 to be visited or sent for by the magnates, just as was deemed 
 most expedient. 
 
 The summoning a great number of men of a particular 
 class or calling to the Parliament from many towns of several 
 counties to be there at once — a kind of second Parliament 
 for the while — was peculiar to our earlier history. 
 
 To obtain correct knowledge of what has occurred, as 
 Sir Walter Raleigh's anecdote illustrates, will ever prove a 
 difScult matter. To come to right conclusions upon what 
 
ALDBOVANDUS AND THE SINGING SWANS. 425 
 
 course ought to be pursued for the future is a matter in 
 which many have to exercise their judgment, and deliver an 
 opinion ; in a word, to encounter ignorance, prejudice, and a 
 zeal to promote the interests of each man's own locality, de- 
 mands the exercise of great qualities, and the possession of 
 much knowledge. 
 
 Did not Aldrovandus find this to be so when he summoned 
 mariners from the coast of Italy singly to come and answer 
 his questions as to the singing of swans ? Each man, we are 
 told, thought if he said swans did not sing in his country 
 that he should bring an opprobrium upon his native land, and 
 furnish a triumph to others. An Englishman declared that 
 English swans sung so sweetly that their songs recreated the 
 mariners as they entered the channel, returning from foreign 
 voyages. A parallel with this was too often to be found in 
 the cases to be adduced. 
 
 In 1342 each of our ports had to send two of the better 
 and discreeter mariners to the Parliament to bestow their 
 advice and counsel upon important matters. This experi- 
 ment, for such we may call it, as it is the first summons re- 
 corded in " Rymer's Foedera," had, it may be fairly presumed, 
 satisfactory results. Numbers were probably found to have 
 been inconveniently great. Let us not cast for a moment a 
 doubt upon the grave and suitable conduct of the mariners 
 called from a distance to deliberate. When the business day 
 was over, like what manner of men could a limner portray 
 them, as they vegetated without tobacco, rum, Hollands, or 
 brandy ? 
 
 In 1344 one mariner had to be sent up from each port; 
 and again, in 1347, a mariner from each port was required to 
 consult upon the safety of the coasts in the king's absence, 
 as the enemy was prepared for invasion with galds guerrinis, 
 Anglic^ war galleys. 
 
 When the course of the manufacturing trade went ill at home 
 or abroad, the magistrates called those together who were 
 best acquainted with the causes, and selected some to go 
 to town. Thus in 1622, when the clothing trade in the 
 
426 SOCIAL HISTORY OP THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 West of England was so dead that tradesmen (z. e. men of 
 that trade) offered to work for meat and drmk only, the 
 justices called together all clothiers, from among whom they 
 selected two from each county of the most sufficient. These 
 were to be sent to London before certain commissioners ap- 
 pointed to inquire into the causes of the above deadness of 
 trade, and to settle a course to revive the trade of clothing 
 beyond the seas.* 
 
 The visiting particular localities by authorised persons in 
 high office to ascertain the truth of returns sent up to court, 
 or to collect information on the spot, was a peculiar feature 
 in ancient polity. A commissioner or two may now be 
 found sitting in a provincial town and taking evidence, but 
 this is different from the cavalcade of illustrious county 
 magistrates, mayors, municipal persons, and numerous 
 attendants. 
 
 In the spring of 1587 several magistrates gave notice, 
 dated 12th March, that they intended to lie at Melcomb, and 
 proceed along the sea coast, and call upon the mayors to at- 
 tend with all in their respective towns that are skilled in 
 fortification, these magistrates having to use their judgments 
 in viewing the dangerous places for the landing of the 
 enemy, t 
 
 We hear nothing of professional men, of engineer and ar- 
 tillery officers. The advice of one clever man in this line 
 woiild have been more valuable than that of all others, pro- 
 vided his theoretical knowledge and experience were com- 
 bined with a complete insight into the local particidars. The 
 separation of these two things, so indispensably required for 
 important undertakings, has occasioned losses in our borough 
 outlays of money, in very recent days, to a great amount. 
 Local knowledge is apt to be dignified into all importance 
 by Town Councils, who can with justice cite instances where 
 professional exaltation of itself has superseded due regard to 
 local knowledge. The balance of error lies greatly on the 
 
 * Walter Yonge's Diary, p. 56. Camden Society, 
 ■j" Sherren Papers. 
 
LANDING OF THE "PRETENDER." 427 
 
 Other side, and we may with truth affirm that professional 
 excellence is not valued as it should be in the West of 
 England. Considering that this abounds and is procurable 
 at so cheap a rate, to neglect availing themselves of it is 
 virtually to spurn the benefits of high civilisation, and to fall 
 back upon times when a mayor was solicited to bring " all 
 that had skill in fortification." 
 
 The Landing of the Pretender in the West expected. — Some 
 Particulars of the Time. 
 
 The now proverbially quiet West of England has largely 
 participated in many great disturbances of an important 
 character. 
 
 There have been foreign landings, — pirates, — " commo- 
 cion time," which ensued after the Reformation, — the ex- 
 pedition of Perkin Warbeck, — an active prosecution of the 
 civil wars, — Monmouth's rebellion, and one expedition 
 more recent was expected, to which these remarks aUude. 
 
 When we reflect upon the misery which has attended all 
 the foregoing events, that there has been one year of tribu- 
 lation the less ought to be a subject of thankfulness. 
 
 The West was agitated by partisanship in favour of, and 
 adverse to, the Pretender. 
 
 WiUiam Pitts, of Lyme, barber and periwig-maker, drink- 
 ing at the Grolden Lion in Colyton in 1715, with Mr. Mar- 
 wood, Captain Bartlett, Mr. Robert Coade, mariner, and 
 others, was invited by the former to drink the health of Dr. 
 Sacheverell, Sir William Windham, and the Duke of Or- 
 mond, who said, *' Let us kick the Trumpery out of door, 
 and have home our King." Pitts deposed to this effect be- 
 fore the Mayor of Lyme, and affirmed that Marwood meant 
 by these words the turning out his Majesty, and bringiag 
 in the Pretender. 
 
428 SOCIAL HISTOKT OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 James Butler, second Duke of Ormond, Lord-Lieutenant 
 of Somersetshire, Sir William Wyndham, and others, were 
 watching for an opportunity to declare for the Pretender. 
 Ormond crossed over to France ; Sir "Williain Wyndham was 
 seized at his house in Somersetshire, but afterwards escaped. 
 The insurrection in the West came to nothing. 
 
 Dr. Thomas Burnett, prebendary of Sarum, writing to 
 the Mayor of Lyme Regis, J. Burridge, Esq. (Dec. 27. 
 1715), adds this piece of information: — 
 
 " I doubt you shall have been under some apprehensions upon 
 your coasts from the Pretender. I believe now the danger is 
 over, and I hope we may say, as Moses did by the Egyptians, 
 ' This day ye have seen the Egyptians, ye shall see them again 
 no more for ever.' " * 
 
 John Burridge, the loyal mayor in 1715-6, spent 10s. 
 on the occasion of the coronation of George I., and gave to 
 the drummers 2s. 6c?., and to the bonfire 3s. Zd. On the 
 19th of November, upon the receipt of news of the defeat of 
 the rebels at Preston, the same outlay took place ; and Fe- 
 bruary 13., upon intelligence of a defeat in Scotland on the 
 Thanksgiving Day, 7th of June, the expenses were doubled, 
 and the guns were fired. 
 
 In the next reign associations were entered into in the 
 West to support^George II. against the rebels* led by the 
 young Pretender. Ralph Allen, the post-horse letter carrier 
 from Marlborough, discovered to General Wade an intended 
 importation of arms to Bath for the Pretender, t 
 
 Robert Henley, Esq., Mayor of Lyme, enters iato his 
 account, Oct. 9. 1645-6, for money expended at the " Three 
 Cups" on the entering into an association to support his 
 Majesty against the rebels, 2Z. 
 
 * Archives of Lyme. 
 
 \ Waylen's Hist, of Marlborough. 
 
BEVERAGES AND MEATS. 429 
 
 April 28 & 29. Expenses at the Three Cups on the rebels' de- 
 feat, 31. 18s. 8d. 
 
 Two hogsheads of cyder supplied for the populace on the asso- 
 ciation and on the victory obtained over the rebels, 21. 
 
 Several Kinds of Beverages used at various Periods of our 
 History in the South-west of England. 
 
 " If thou dost observe duly, thou wilt find that not only terms 
 of speech and the fashions of dress and of manners are changed 
 from one age to another, but yet what is more, the tastes and in- 
 clinations of our minds ; and this diversity is seen, etiam at the 
 same point of time, between one country and another, wherein are 
 not only diversities of manners, which may proceed from the 
 diversity of institutions, but also of tastes in meats, and various 
 appetites of man." — Maxims of Guicciardini. 
 
 That the kind of meats used for man's daily sustenance 
 has great connection with his state of civilisation, adaptation 
 to climate, and health, is a fact no one can dispute ; hence 
 its importance in many inquiries. No less important is the 
 consideration of what man drinks, whether this is for the 
 necessary aliment of his body, or for his bane, in furnishing 
 him with stimulants that drive him to feverish excitement, 
 to mad actions, and to the perpetration, as a matter of course, 
 of crime. 
 
 It does not follow that a man born at a particular period 
 of history, and who suits himself to the manners of his 
 cotemporaries, has given any thought to the comparative 
 superiority of any particular beverage. He was the crea- 
 ture of accident as to the use of this or that article of food. 
 To descant upon these may be interesting. 
 
 We can say no more of Mead, or Metheglin, but that it 
 was the fermented drink of the ancient Britons, made from 
 honey. 
 
430 SOCIAL HISTOET OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Wine, known from the remotest period of history, and 
 then characterised as having a divine origin, was some cen- 
 turies since sold as a cordial mediciae by apothecaries and 
 by mercers. The great made use of wine as an article of 
 luxury for the table from early times ; to the people at 
 large It was unknown as such. Wine, the " comfortable 
 stuff" now-a-days of the country poor, was principally used 
 for physic and the Communion. 
 
 The latter service greatly differed from that of modern 
 times. The sacred elements were placed upon a credence 
 table for a tasting beforehand, as a security against the ad- 
 mixture of poison. This might have proved fatal to the 
 recipients who consumed a quantity of the wine. A com- 
 municant drank deep to evince his sincerity. Rare Ben 
 Jonson was twelve years in the church of Rome ; and at 
 his reconciliation to the church of England, upon the occa- 
 sion of his first communion, in token of his true reconcilia- 
 tion, he drank the full cup of wine. 
 
 Wine was largely imported from Gascony Into our sea- 
 ports In the reigns of the Plantagenets. The Pipa Garda 
 were large fixed tanks to hold the wine in the centre of the 
 vessels that brought home the produce of the English pos- 
 sessions in France. By this plan space was economised. 
 The sailors of the middle ages understood " sucking the 
 monkey," i. e., furtively drawing off some wine from a cask 
 in course of transit. 
 
 Gregory Charlemagne, the first mayor of Lyme Regis 
 In the reign of Edward I., was found, by a jury at the 
 assizes held there, to have sold twenty tons of wine contrary 
 to the assize. The magistrates had fixed the price, and this 
 merchant, Great-Charley by name, not Uklng trade to be 
 fettered, ventured to effect a sale at the price his mer- 
 chandise would really fetch. 
 
 Under the head of " Presents to Great Men," in this 
 volume, there Is mention of wine of various kinds given to 
 them, and partaken of in company with them, but only as a 
 luxury, a treat, and not as an article in general use. 
 
CHEAP WINES OF ENGLAND. 431 
 
 If the relative value of money be taken into account, 
 wine was not a cheap commodity. There were fifty-sLx 
 small wines, and thirty Italian, Grecian, and Spanish wines 
 imported. 
 
 The south-west coast of England was the most favoured 
 locality for cheap wine, as compared with inland parts dis- 
 tant from any port. The cost of carriage over roads at times 
 impassable, must have been very great, so as to greatly 
 enhance the value of a pottle of claret. Koyal and exalted 
 personages were formerly elevated to a much greater height 
 by comparison above the great mass of society than is now 
 the case. Too often have their manners and mode of life 
 been adduced as examples of the general manners of the 
 time ; whereas the two classes were separated by a wide 
 boundary. Frugality in many shapes abode with one class, 
 and left luxury and prodigal expenditure to their fated 
 residence in courts and lordly halls. 
 
 "Wine, before the introduction of bottles such as are now 
 used, between the years 1760 and 1790, was kept in flask 
 bottles or flasks. 
 
 Thus runs the verse of a song : — 
 
 " Then for your pottles with handles three, 
 I'm sure they'll get no praise from me, 
 For when a man and his wife shall fall to strife, 
 As they often may do in the course of a life, 
 The one does lug, and the other does tug. 
 And betwixt them both they break the jug ; 
 But if it had only been a leather bottel 
 They might have tugg'd away, yet all had been well. 
 So let us hope, &c.* 
 
 Corks were sold, about 1712, at I8d. a gross. 
 
 In the reign of Henry IV. every butt of Malmsey and 
 of Tyre obliged the importer to bring with it ten bow- 
 staves. 
 
 There was in the household of Edward IV. " a pitcher- 
 
 * Notes and Queries, Oct. 14. 1854. 
 
432 SOCIAL HISTOBY OF THE SOUTHEBN COUNTIES. 
 
 house." There were new ashen cups for the ale, and ''pots 
 to serve men of worship." 
 
 In the Earl of Northumberland's house, in 1512, there 
 were earthen pots in common use, and also leathern pots. 
 
 At an election feast of the Drapers' Company in 1522, 
 earthen pots were used for ale and wine; gilt cups "for 
 red wine and ipocras." 
 
 Drinking stone pots were imported from Cologne in the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth ; there was no such manufactures 
 in England. Frequent mention occurs of breaking the 
 stone pots at beer-houses. The reason for doing this was 
 because these pots were not of fuU measure. 
 
 Vins de liqueur were displayed at bed time, when, in con- 
 ducting strangers to their chambers, these were offered, 
 accompanied by sweetmeats, comfits, &c. 
 
 "Wine and beer have been placed in antagonism in an 
 anacreontic ascribed to a noble writer * as the prime movers 
 in man. The question is begged that great affairs demand 
 the stimulus of drink ; for without it, as is alleged, no impor- 
 tant results from the exercise of intellect have been ob- 
 tained. Wine is made to bear away the palm, and is the 
 real specific for searching out man, and through the cor- 
 poreal substance, sublimating his mental ability. The 
 writer, perhaps, thought of his order when he dignified 
 wine and made it supersede genius, study, and the dry 
 virtues : — 
 
 " The drinkers of beer 
 
 Did ne'er yet appear. 
 In matters of any weight 
 
 'Tis he whose design 
 
 Is quicken'd by wine 
 That raises wit to its height." 
 
 Even so has it proved in ancient times with respect to 
 the attributing courage, by a graduated scale, to those who 
 habituated themselves to the several beverages. 
 
 * Lord Broghill, afterwards the Earl of Orrery. 
 
WINE, — ITS EFFECT ON THE GREEKS. 433 
 
 ^schylus accounted for the superiority of the Greeks 
 in conflict over the Egyptians from their drink *: — 
 
 aW aprrtvas rot TrjaSt yrje o'lKtiTepciQ 
 evpr]aeT, oh Trivovras iic Kpiduii' fiidv. 
 
 Here may you look to meet a race of men, 
 Not such as drink your sodden barley mead. 
 
 Shakspeare put a sentiment into the mouths of the con- 
 quering Normans, that their superiority over the brave but 
 sluggish Saxons was due to the nobler beverage which they 
 drank : — 
 
 " Can sodden water, 
 A drench for sur-reigned jades, their barley broth 
 Decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat. 
 And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine, 
 Seem frosty ? " f 
 
 The quantity of wine made by the monks in their gardens 
 or vineyards may have been considerable. Wine made of 
 pearmains we should now call perry. A tenure in Norfolk 
 was held by petty serjeanty, and the payment of 200 pear- 
 mains and four hogsheads of cider, or wine made of pear- 
 mains. J 
 
 At the first mention of Beek let us not forget that, if we 
 are to believe Diodorus, that liquor had a divine origin like 
 wine, Bacchus having taught mankind how to make both. 
 
 Ale is mentioned in England as early as the laws of Ina, 
 King of Wessex. Though cider may have been used, ale 
 was the favourite liquor of the Anglo-Saxons and Danes, 
 as it had been of their ancestors in Germany. " In the 
 Edda the drinking large and frequent draughts of this be- 
 verage is placed among the chief delights of the Hall of 
 Odin, by which we may estimate the value that was set 
 upon such draughts by those who were waiting for that pro- 
 motion." § 
 
 * Suppl. 957. t Gent.'s Mag. 1854. 
 
 ^ Blomfield's Hist. § Smedley, in Encyclo. Metrop. 
 
 F F 
 
434 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Beer was an important article, constituting a principal 
 part of two meals when tea, coffee, and spirits were not in 
 use. The mayor and magistrates of most boroughs held an 
 assize of bread and beer. At this sitting or assize they 
 settled the price of those articles till the next assize should 
 be held. Petty legislation left nothing to the free action 
 of individuals ; hence much injustice was often done, and 
 great discontent prevailed, as in beer-drinking Germany in 
 the present day. Beer riots are described as being still 
 very violent outbreaks. 
 
 We will consider beer to have been the principal drink 
 of the great mass of Englishmen as an article of food. Ale 
 was the equivalent of strong beer — the October of this 
 century. 
 
 Various descriptions of grain were employed in the manu- 
 facture of beer — barley, wheat, and oats were used almost 
 indiscriminately, and even sometimes mixed together. Be- 
 fore the introduction of hops, this liquor was flavoured with 
 spices, pepper, and other condiments. 
 
 At Hinton House, the seat of Earl Poulett, are pre- 
 served some decanters that held the strong beer set on 
 table, marked with the oat. The ale or strong beer was 
 drunk out of long glasses after dinner, as wine now is. 
 
 At a Somersetshire hunt dinner, seventy years since, 
 thirteen toasts used to be drunk in strong beer ; then every 
 one did as he liked. Some members of the hunt occa- 
 sionally drank a glass of wine at the wind up, who were 
 not themselves previously wound up.* In country towns, 
 after a dinner at one o'clock p.m., friends used to meet to 
 discuss the local news over their glasses of strong beer, the 
 merits of which furnished a daily theme. At Bampton one 
 knot of gentlemen took four times the duration of the 
 Trojan war, and even then failed to settle which of the 
 party brewed the best beer. 
 
 A new liquor gratified, in Charles the Second's reign, 
 the lovers of novelty. This was a strong beer, introduced 
 
 * Authority, Major Natli. Knot, of the 2nd Somerset Militia. 
 
RAGE FOE INTOXICATING LIQUOE. — " MUM." 435 
 
 to the public from Brunswick, called Mum. So great was the 
 rage for this intoxicating liquor, that ten persons sold It at 
 Lyme without a license, and were made the subject of a 
 presentment. The word was derived from the German mum- 
 meln, to mumble, or from mum, the sign of silence ; that 
 is, either drink that will make a cat speak, or drink that 
 will take away the power of speech. 
 Thus writes Pope : — 
 
 " The clamorous crowd is hush'd with mugs of mum, 
 Till all, tuned equal, send a general hum." 
 
 This foreign drink was rivalled by Dorchester beer, or, as 
 it was named in London, Dorset beer. One who had 
 foolishly indulged calls the drink foolish. He writes 
 thus : — 
 
 "May 18. 1725. I found the effect of last night's drinking that 
 foolish Dorset, which was pleasant enough, but did not at all agree 
 with me, for it made me very stupid all day." * 
 
 The great Manchester philosopher, who indulged in the 
 above excess, could not have made a west countryman's dis- 
 tinction in his favour. The poor man in question, when 
 seen to be engaged in taking some beer, observed, " I 
 d'wunt drinky for drunky ; I do drinky for dry." 
 
 In many houses where an aged gentleman is the master, 
 strong beer (now rarely called ale, which latter term is 
 appropriated to a weaker beverage intended to be used at 
 table) is still brewed; but after dinner, at public and private 
 tables, foreign wine, mostly from the peninsula, has sup- 
 planted beer, and, we may add, pipes and tobacco. 
 
 Whether Cider has been for years the exclusive drink 
 of the men of the cider counties, is proposed for our con- 
 sideration. 
 
 Many speak of cider as having been always in use in 
 the West of England, where men chose between it and 
 
 * Byrom's MS. Journal, Chetham Society, 
 rp 2 
 
436 SOCIAL HISTOEY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 beer or ale ; whereas in other parts malt liquor alone could 
 be procured. A distinction must be made between the 
 depths of the country and borough towns. 
 
 Cider is now grown, to use a common expression, in great 
 quantities in what is known as the cider country or cider 
 counties. There the great part of the population drink 
 nothing else. Devonshire, parts of Somersetshire, Worces- 
 tershire, and Herefordshire, are pre-eminently cider counties. 
 
 The early use of a drink called cider, and the production 
 of such immense quantities of that beverage, such as that of 
 ten thousand hogsheads in one parish, viz., Martock in 
 Somersetshire, are two distinct matters. 
 
 Cider without doubt is of early origin, and is supposed to 
 have been first known in Africa, as it is mentioned by Ter- 
 tullian and Augustine, the two fathers. St. Jerome speaks 
 of an inebriating liquor made of the juice of apples. 
 
 Biscay, long famed for its cider, received it, as is believed, 
 from the Carthaginians. A full description of this beverage 
 is given by Navagerus, in the journal of his embassy to the 
 Emperor Charles V. 
 
 The ancient Britons, Kke other northern nations, may 
 have made an intoxicating liquor from the tSorbus, or service 
 tree; and though hardly from the indigenous crab-apple, 
 yet some perhaps from the better kind of apples introduced by 
 the Romans. The Anglo-Saxons distinguished their " ^p~ 
 pel win " from wine and mead. 
 
 The Normans probably obtained their cider-apple trees 
 from Biscay ; the climate and soU there both favoured their 
 growth. To the abbeys of that country we must look for 
 the improvement of apples and cider-making. 
 
 Near Valognes, in the department of La Manche, stood 
 the famous abbey of Montebourg. The possessions of this 
 abbey extended to Dorset and Devon. Besides lands in 
 Axmouth parish in South-east Devon, the manor and church 
 given in the reign of Henry II., there were also other 
 lands, and a priory in Loders, near Bridport, Dorsetshire. 
 
 Cider was made on the Montebourg lands before the 
 year 1286. The monks, who possessed nearly all the know- 
 
EARLY INTRODUCTION OP CIDEE. 437 
 
 ledge that prevailed at that era, had introduced upon their 
 estates on this side the channel apple-trees, for the growth 
 of apples for cider-making. They had also taught their 
 tenants how to make cider, according to the approved plan 
 of Normandy, which is still preserved in that part of France, 
 in the Norman islands of Guernsey and Jersey, and in 
 Herefordshire. 
 
 W. Villata, of Loders and Bothenhampton, near Brid- 
 port, held land of the Abbot of Montebourg, upon payment 
 of six shillings a year, and upon his finding a horse (ad mo- 
 lendum poma, &c.), to grind the apples in what is now called 
 a horse-mill.* 
 
 The skilful monks may have done much towards the 
 improvement of their estates by the introduction of better 
 fruit trees. Probably others were not disposed to adopt 
 novelties any more than their descendants in the present day. 
 
 The Quarantine apple is supposed to be a corruption of 
 Carentan apple. Many other names are old names corrupted 
 in the course of years. A perriwinkle shell-fish is termed 
 a,gohbet. It is the Norman gobet, a mouthful, as the famous 
 cherries of the valley of Montmorency are now called les 
 bons gobets. 
 
 That cider was made, as before related, in the twelfth 
 century, cannot be denied ; but not to any great extent, if 
 we institute a comparison with the great doings now-a-days 
 of cider-making Devon and Somerset. 
 
 The Vicar of Dawlish, in the South Hams (now a water- 
 ing place), received, in 1280, one half the crop of apples, 
 doubtless grown for making cider.f 
 
 The word Orchard, or, as it is now pronounced, Orchat, 
 perhaps a name given by the monks from op-^^aros, has been 
 a fruitful source of error. It was not in any sense the 
 orchard of modern times. The latter is a space planted with 
 
 * The late M. de Gerville, the learned antiquary of Valognes, pos- 
 sessed the cartulary of Montebourg. He communicated this information 
 to the Author in 1841. His death took place in 1853. 
 
 t See a Manorial Visitation in the possession of the Rev. George 
 Oliver, D.D. 
 
 r p 3 
 
438 SOCIAL HISTOET OF THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 apple trees of greater or less extent, unlike the practice of 
 Normandy and Brittany, where pasture and arable land is 
 crossed by rows of apple trees, and where the English 
 practice of planting the trees in one spot with grass under 
 them does not obtain. 
 
 The orchard of early reigns was a place laid out with trees 
 as a pleasure garden for walking, recreation, and sports, 
 having arbours and similar appropriate places. Such a spot, 
 if apple trees prevailed, was called an apple garden, or apple 
 orchard. 
 
 An apple garden is spoken of in Domesday Book as exist- 
 ing at Nottingham, Horti and Hortuli are frequent in the 
 same record. 
 
 The monks of Lewes Priory, Sussex, had in their in- 
 closure, of thirty-two and a half acres within walls, a para- 
 dise (park), a garden, and an apple Oechaed, which felt 
 the effects of a gale, A. d. 1267.* 
 
 Some apples were valued in an orchard in Norfolk, a. d. 
 1289, at Qs. 8d. ; the mill, at 9s. The apple, like the viae, 
 has been tried in climates and soils quite unsuited to it.f 
 
 There were ardent lovers of horticulture among the clergy. 
 Upon the extension of a part of Wells Cathedral about the 
 year 1326, there was a special provision made for the care- 
 ful preservation of a certain medlar tree.\ Quinces sold, in 
 1292, at 4s. the hundred. 
 
 "Wycliffe knew of the strength of cider, for he translated 
 the passage, Luke i. 15., " He shal be gret bifore the Lord, 
 and he schal not drynke wyne ne sider." 
 
 One Cottingham, of Seaford, gave a bond, 26 Elizabeth, 
 that while he should continue a tippler, he and his household 
 should be orderly, and keep no unlawful games nor evil rule 
 within his house, GAEDEN, or orchards, during the said 
 time of his tippling, i. e., dealing in liquor. In the orchard 
 was doubtless the skittle-alley for summer days. 
 
 ' Horsfield's Sussex. f Blomfield's Norfolk. 
 
 1 Archseolog. Institute. 
 
CIDEK MUCH ESTEEMED. 439 
 
 Butler, in his " Hudibras," gives, among other require- 
 ments of Sidrophel that he knew, — 
 
 " And in what sign best sider's made." 
 
 So that in the reign of Charles II., not only was attention 
 paid to the growth of the apple, but to the making this fruit 
 into cider — an operation of importance enough to be re- 
 ferred to an astrologer, then a common practice. 
 
 Apple trees and pear trees also began to be much culti- 
 vated about the middle of the 17th century. In a pamphlet 
 addressed to the well-known Samuel Hartlib, Esq., A. D. 
 1657, entitled "Herefordshire Orchards, a Pattern for all 
 England," it is asserted that gennet-moyles bear every other 
 year, and make the best cider. Mordicant, or sharp cider, 
 pleased the peasant or working man, as was the case in 
 France. 
 
 In Herefordshire, few cottagers, and even few of the 
 wealthiest yeomen, taste any other drink in the family but 
 cider, except at some special festivals twice or thrice in a 
 year, and that for variety rather than for choice. 
 
 The credit of cider had of late years much advanced in the 
 estimation of the best gentry, who had sought out the right 
 method of ripening and hoarding the choicest fruits, and 
 some also of bottling it. 
 
 " But I am confident," the writer adds, " that much more 
 may be added to the perfection of it, when they shall also 
 apply to it the due subtleties of the mysterious art of fer- 
 mentation." * 
 
 Each cultivator bestowed greater attention, having proved 
 that — 
 
 " Else false hopes 
 He cherishes, nor will his fruit expect 
 Th' autumnal season, but in summer's pride, 
 "When other orchats smile abortive fail." 
 
 Philips, Cider, book i. 
 
 * The late eccentric, A. Cross, Esq., of Bromfield, near Taunton 
 famous for his experiments in electricity and galvanism, believed he should 
 be able to master fermentation in cider. He did not succeed. 
 
 F r 4 
 
440 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 lYassaillng the orchards on New Year's Eve is called, in 
 Sussex and those parts, " Apple Howling," from the words 
 used : — 
 
 " Stand fast root, bear well top, 
 Pray the God send us a good howling crop, &c." 
 
 Hence the entries in former centuries of money given to the 
 " howling boys " may be understood. 
 
 Hooker, in his MS. survey, records that the apple was 
 cultivated in Devonshire so early as 1520. He must mean 
 begun to be grown for the purposes of cider. He continues, 
 " but in the beginning of the following century it received 
 more attention." 
 
 So long as the narrow lanes served to keep up the com- 
 munication between the principal towns, and pack-horses 
 did all the work, there being no carts, how could cider in 
 hogsheads have been sent about the country ? It could not 
 have been sent to any great distance. 
 
 Before the attention Hooker speaks of was given to the 
 APPLE, that fruit, and the cider made from it, were very 
 indifferent in quality. Rough, and fit only for working men, 
 the cider of that day was consumed by country people, and 
 the inhabitants of villages and small towns. Fashion alone 
 did not exclude cider from boroughs. The beer laws, we 
 believe, excluded that beverage ; these would have been in- 
 terfered with by the introduction of cider. The importation 
 from another town of beer brewed there, which, according 
 to the language of borough legislation, was called " foreign 
 beer," disturbed the due operation of the beer laws at 
 Weymouth. The " foolish Dorset," or Dorchester beer, and 
 " Mum," so captivated the people of "Weymouth, that they 
 spurned the decoction from malt made in their own borough, 
 whatever its strength or flavour might be. A compromise 
 was effected ; the men of the borough were indulged ; and 
 an impost upon the imported beer was levied. Liberty was 
 little understood in the Tudor and early Stuart reigns. As 
 it began to dawn, which we conclude from the alteration in 
 the stringency of borough legislation, individuals exercised 
 
CIDEE. — ENTRY IN THE HUSTINGS' BOOK. 441 
 
 tte right of buying what commodities suited them, or pleased 
 them, wherever made or produced. Halsers might be made 
 in England at other places than Bridport ; good beer might 
 be brought from any other town to gratify the palates of the 
 people of a borough who loathed that brewed in their own 
 locality ; cider might be purchased and sent to a townsman's 
 cellar, though not recognised as a beverage by the borough 
 legislators. They had provided no cider-taster, nor clogged 
 the buying and selling it by any bye-laws. There was no 
 assize of cider. It was, very probably before the close of 
 Charles II. 's reign, a beverage held in contempt in towns 
 from its utter inferiority, and if excluded from its inter- 
 fering with the regulations for the sale of beer, creating no 
 great amount of dissatisfaction and complaint against the 
 worshipful local magnates. 
 
 The absence of the mention of cider up to a certain 
 period, in borough archives, is very remarkable. In ac- 
 compts, where every halfpenny is carefully set down; in 
 dinners of the most homely kind, and feasts, such as the 
 Cobb Ale at Lyme, and the feast at Ford House in a din- 
 ner to Charles I,, altogether (for the country) very sump- 
 tuous up to this period referred to, and which requires to 
 be specified, there is no mention of cider ; then cider takes 
 its place with ale and beer, and furnishes an item in every 
 accompt for refreshment or festive enjoyment at table of the 
 inhabitants of boroughs. 
 
 In the detailed presentments of the Hustings' Book for 
 Lyme for the year 1597, of the stealers of wood and pollers 
 of trees for fuel, appears this entry : — 
 
 Item, they present George Browne's son, Hoode's son, and 
 Thomas Sampford's boy to break into men's orchards and steal 
 apples. 
 
 Whether these were apples for the table or for cider 
 matters little, after what has been written above, as no 
 cider is mentioned in the archives for one hundred and ten 
 years. 
 
 In 1629 apples were cultivated in Massachusetts from 
 
442 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 seed imported from England by order of tlie governor and 
 company of the colony. Governor's Island, in Boston har- 
 bour, vras given to Governor Winthrop in 1632, on con- 
 dition that he should plant an orchard upon it.* 
 
 A hogshead of Somersetshire cider was brought to Mr. 
 Richards, near Dorchester, a.d. 1699 f, upon the occasion 
 of England and Scotland being united into one kingdom ; a 
 hogshead of cider was given by the corporation of Lyme to 
 the soldiers, at a cost of 25s. 
 
 Wine, beer, and cider were given away at Minchinhamp- 
 ton upon the accession of King George in 1714. 
 
 In 1745-6 the accompt of Robert Henley, Esq., Mayor 
 of Lyme, exhibits : — 
 
 April 28. Two hogsheads of cider supplied for the populace 
 on the association (to support Ms majesty George II.), and on 
 the victory obtained over the rebels, 21. 
 
 The mayor purchased this cider at Pinney Farm, of 
 ^Yalter Oke, a country gentleman, who farmed his own 
 land, and had planted some of the now far-famed Cleeve- 
 land, late Pinney-under-CliflP, with apple trees. 
 
 The farmers of the Somersetshire parishes near Sedge- 
 moor, so soon as they heard that the king's forces had won 
 the battle, and defeated the jMonmouth men, sent hogsheads 
 of cider to the victors. The price of a hogshead of cider 
 given away at Axminster in 1689 was 17s. 6(f.| 
 
 This beverage was doubtless much improved, so as to be 
 very acceptable to the lower orders of the west country, 
 and also strangers. It had to rise to the dignity of being 
 admitted to civic feasts on equal terms with beer and more 
 potent ale. This point was gained in 1737, when this entry 
 is to be found at Lyme, in a dinner bill : — 
 
 Beer, cider, and ale, 8s. \0d. 
 
 In short, as in 1746-7, "Beer, ale, and cider, 10s, 4rf." 
 
 * ISTotes and Queries, from New York Sun, 1854. 
 
 ■\ See his Diary, Retrospective Review. 
 
 1 Pulman's Book of the Axe. N.B. The cask had to be returned. 
 
EXTRAVAGANT PRICE OF CIDER. 443 
 
 became an example of a common entry. We may conclude 
 that, as is now the case in cider countries, the civic autho- 
 rities were divided upon the merits, or in the choice of 
 beer or cider at meals, so both beverages were provided. 
 
 The excellence of the cider made throughout the breadth 
 of the cider-growing West is very great ; the quantity is 
 enormous. Some localities, which have a good name for 
 their cider, send out much more cider than is produced 
 therein, like in wine countries, so much does man resemble 
 man in all countries and ages. The growers in the localities 
 in question buy Norman apples at a cheap rate, and mix 
 them with their own fruit. 
 
 Could the monks of Montebourg have dreamt of cider 
 selling at ten guineas a hogshead for bottling? A wide 
 field for improvement of the fruit trees for orchards still 
 lies before the negligent cultivator. The cockygee, or any 
 other famous apple tree, covers no more space than a worth- 
 less tree. Fine cider, properly bottled, is a drink that may 
 compete with much of the sparkling German wine. Those 
 who have met with the following statement will excuse its 
 introduction here. 
 
 Some gentlemen, travelling from Strasbourg to Trey- 
 bury, stopped at the village of Altenheim, in Baden, at an 
 inn kept by a respectable man who farmed his own estate 
 of 100 acres. Perceiving how loaded the trees of his 
 orchard were, the English gentleman spoke of the great 
 crop of apples, and of cider. The German informed them 
 that no cider was made in that country; the juice was 
 mixed with the juice of grapes, and made into wine ! 
 
 In 1854, some growers of cider in Devon and Somerset 
 make much more than a thousand hogsheads in one year 
 when the crop is good. 
 
 In many parts of this realm cider is spoken of as a 
 sweet, luscious drink made to please the palate, and with 
 that intent only. Great is the disappointment often felt 
 upon arriving in the cider country, in tasting so much that 
 is rough — at all events, not sweet. The strength and po- 
 tency of the drink is likewise little suspected. All these 
 
444 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 things numbers are surprisingly ignorant of. Tlje cider 
 drinker's passions are roused by that beverage, and vice has 
 its full sway. Crime results as from indulgence in other 
 fermented liquors. The Rev. Giles Moore, in his Diary, 
 records in Latin how he had underrated the strength of 
 perry.* 
 
 Poor working men drink cider when good food is more 
 requisite for them. The strength of the liquor is injurious, 
 and causes feverish excitement. 
 
 Any account of cider would be incomplete without some 
 mention of the imposition of a tax of two shillings, after- 
 wards of four shillings per hogshead. 
 
 Sir Francis Dashwood, the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 in 1763, proposed a new tax on cider and perry, amounting 
 to ten shillings on the hogshead, and to be paid by the 
 first buyer. Earl Stanhope, in his history, vol. v., mentions 
 that the complaints were so loud that a modification of the 
 scheme was allowed, and four shillings were to be paid by 
 the grower, though some cider sold for five shillings, 
 other for fifty shillings a hogshead. The change made the 
 grower liable to the regulations of the excise. The tax 
 was estimated at 75,OOOZ. 
 
 "Worcestershire and Devonshire, " the cyder land," were 
 eager and loud in their complaints. The loyalty of those 
 districts, like that of the cJUer land of Brittany, was coupled 
 with the growth of cider : — 
 
 " Oh, Charles ! oh, best of kings ! 
 
 Yet was the cyder-land unstained with guilt ; 
 The cyder-land, obsequious still to thrones. 
 Abhorred such base, disloyal deeds, and all 
 Her pruning-hooks extended into swords ! " 
 
 John Philips, Cider, book ii. 
 
 Lord North married Lady Drake's daughter, of Ashe 
 House. It was in 1765 that his lordship was so frightened 
 
 * Sussex Arclia3ol. 
 
TAX UPON CIDER. — SPIRITS. 445 
 
 when visiting at Ashe, at the shouts of the reapers, and 
 their cry after finishing cutting the wheat on the estate, 
 " "We have'n — we have'n ! " The cider tax occurred to 
 him. Lord North is said to have looked upon himself as 
 a dead man, and Sir Robert Hamilton, the husband of 
 Lady Drake's sister, seized a sword for defence, till the 
 steward explained the local custom.* In conclusion of 
 cider — just as the Breton, in whatever quarter of the world 
 he may be placed, amidst the choicest luxuries and cuisine 
 sighs for his galette, even so does the man of the cider 
 counties remember and regret his native liquor. Nothing 
 is to him equal to the beverage of his boyhood. 
 
 Spirits used to be called "comfortable waters," and 
 " strong waters," in the reign of James I. When a poor 
 country person' begs for spirit now-a-day at the rich man's 
 door, for some one who is sick, he asks by a general term 
 for some "comfortable stuff." 
 
 Spirits are not mentioned any more than cider at the 
 great feast at Lyme, the Cobb ale, the dinner at Ford 
 House to King Charles I., nor in any accompt of corpora- 
 tion dinners in the seventeenth century. When Sir George 
 Summers, of Lyme, in 1609, was driven before a hurricane, 
 which led to his discovery of the Bermudas or Summer 
 Islands, there appeared no hope of saving the ship, so water- 
 logged was she at last. In this extremity we learn those 
 who had " comfortable waters " drank to one another as 
 taking their last leaves. Beer was shipped at Lyme when a 
 party were about to sail against the pirates. 
 
 The invention of this or that kind of drink is not a subject 
 to be here discussed. It is the coming into general use, and 
 its effect upon society of each beverage, that we wish to 
 describe. 
 
 Rum could only have been made after that molasses or 
 treacle became abundant, from the great growth of the 
 sugar-cane about the middle of the seventeenth century. 
 
 * See Pulman's Book of the Axe. 
 
446 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 When the Duke of Monmouth was being conducted to 
 London in 1685 as a prisoner, having a bad cold, he took 
 at Romsey, while remaining in the saddle, a hot glass of 
 rum and eggs. This " Jamaica " was a fashionable spirit 
 in James the Second's and following reign. In 1856 there 
 is no demand for rum even by spirit drinkers. 
 
 Punch, which has rum for its chief ingredient, was all 
 the rage when its due proportions began to be discovered. 
 This compound was adopted at the corporation dinners at 
 Lyme. 
 
 We find that the novelty was the rage at its introduction. 
 When Coade was mayor, in 1737, at a feast of the corpora- 
 tion, sixteen bowls of punch were drunk, at a charge of one 
 shilling each. Brandy was sold for many years at one shilling 
 a gallon. 
 
 Rum, brandy, Hollands, and wine now being subject to 
 a heavy duty, the smuggling trade began to be brisk. These 
 commodities were brought across from the Channel Islands 
 in small barrels or tubs, and landed at once or sunk in 
 rafts to be taken up when an opportunity offered. The 
 custom house establishments were large, and provided with 
 long boats, in which the officers sailed after smugglers, and 
 crept for sunk rafts. 
 
 This smuggling trade during the reigns of the first King 
 Georges threw into the country, at the back of the south 
 coast of England, a great quantity of spirit. The drinking 
 of spirits and water became a common practice, where ale 
 or strong beer was indulged in before. Either in excess is 
 bad. Very generally does an opinion prevail that strong 
 beer drinking, even in excess, could hurt no one. This is 
 incorrect, as is a sweeping charge against the moderate use 
 of spirit, as if any use of it must be hurtful. 
 
 The introduction of cheap foreign spirit created a very 
 pernicious habit — that of dram drinking. At Lyme, in 
 1774, the vestry determined ''to afford no relief to those 
 who frequent houses where drams are sold." Dram drink- 
 ing created private drunkards, who were a rare class in 
 
DRUNKENNESS. — EAGE FOR COFFEE-HOUSES. 447 
 
 former ageg. Drunkenness and conviviality were before 
 that closely allied. 
 
 Old women fell under the imputation of liking raw spirits. 
 When the Isle of Man was sold by the Duke of AthoU to 
 the Crown, that it might no longer continue to be a nest of 
 smugglers, the song containing these lines was composed : — 
 
 " There's not an old wife loves a dram, 
 But must lament for the Isle of Man." 
 
 The use of wine, beer, and cider for a meal — the morn- 
 ing and evening draught — has given way to the decoctions 
 made from foreign products. 
 
 The far-famed Sir Anthony Shirley, when he arrived at 
 Aleppo in 1 598, first tasted a drink that he described as being 
 " made of a seed which will soon intoxicate the brain," and 
 which, though " nothing toothsome, was wholesome." This 
 was coffee. 
 
 I detected the first entry in a mayor's account, in 1686, 
 of that functionary having at the Dorchester assizes taken 
 coffee. Coffee-houses became quite the rage in the metro- 
 polis. There was a floating coffee-house opposite Somerset 
 House, called the " Folly." The borough towns of the 
 country soon emulated London in being provided with 
 coffee-houses, where every one was admitted who laid down 
 a penny at the bar. Though coffee was only introduced 
 from Turkey in 1650, it became fashionable in the reign of 
 Charles II., and is thus spoken of by Pope in his " Rape 
 oftheLock:" — 
 
 " CoffeOj which makes the politician wise, 
 And see through all things with his half-shut eyes." 
 
 The " Kingdom's Intelligencer " contains these prices : — 
 
 In 1662, at a new coffee-house, the " Great Turk," right coffee 
 powder sold at from 4«. to 6s. 8d. per lb. ; that pounded in a 
 mortar at 2s. a lb. 
 
 Chocolate, an Indian drink, was charged 2s. 6d. a lb. 
 
 Tea was to be had from 6s. to 60*. a lb. 
 
448 SOCIAL HISTOKY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 All gentlemen that were customers were invited the next 
 New Year's Day to partake of coffee there " on free cost." 
 See Burn's account of the Tokens in the collection of Mr. 
 Beaufoy. When made, the drink paid 4rf. a gallon to the 
 excise. 
 
 Tea began to be mentioned in the diaries of gentlemen 
 residing in the country after the year 1700; so slowly was 
 the new beverage introduced in parts remote from the great 
 cities. 
 
 Drinking when transacting Business. 
 
 The principal men of boroughs, in the Tudor reigns, drank 
 when transacting business of every kind; and this at a 
 tavern, just as the lower orders do in the present day. The 
 sober only complied with a general practice ; the intempe- 
 rate, doubtless, as their modern representatives, seized an 
 opportunity thus offered for inordinate indulgence. The 
 practice once admitted, it was better that the pottle of sack 
 should be drank at a tavern than at the house of business, 
 over which was the family residence. For instance, Mr. 
 William Tudbold, Mayor of Lyme, 1551, enters: — 
 
 Item, paid at Robert Davy's when we new agreed with Whytte 
 the mason, virf. 
 
 We may in fairness add, that the parties transacting busi- 
 ness felt more independent at a tavern than they would in 
 the private residence of either party, and were bound to 
 make some return to the landlord for the use of his house. 
 At home, when wine was produced, many of the family 
 might have been expected to partake. Thus an injurious 
 and expensive habit may have been acquired, or the founda- 
 tion laid at all events. 
 
KEGULATIONS AS TO BAKING. 449 
 
 Regulations for the Baking and Sale of Bread. 
 
 Bread occupies mucli less space than beer in our borough 
 archives. Few are found faulty in respect of their making 
 the former ; and scarcely any regulations have come down 
 to us, while the latter article occasioned many local legisla- 
 tive enactments, deemed, no doubt, to be no more necessary 
 than important. We early read of horse bread and sale 
 bread. These were, perhaps, much the same, the latter being 
 bread not baked for home consumption, but for sale, and the 
 former sale bread carried about the country on /^orse-back. 
 A horse-loaf weighed 18 oz. troy, and sold, in 1588, for Id. 
 Nearly every one used to bake for his own use. There was 
 in the 18th century no white bread baker at Lyme, as 
 lately, perhaps still, at Penrith, a town of 8000 inhabitants. 
 There was a great distinction made between the white and 
 black bread bakers in by-gone years. In the archives of 
 Canterbury it appears, that if the white bread and black 
 bread bakers interfered with each other before the Reforma- 
 tion, the fine was 40s. ; a very considerable sum.* 
 
 Henry Palmer and Joan Sampford, widow, were ordered 
 at Lyme, in 1592, from that time to bake no more saZe bread; 
 subpoand, 5s. 
 
 The entry runs thus : quod deinceps nan pincernant panem 
 vocatum saIiE-beead. 
 
 There is in some archives mention made of ranged bread. 
 
 Why these worthies were debarred from carrying on their 
 particular, perhaps newly taken up trade or line of business, 
 nowhere appears. So, in 1610, there is a presentment of 
 Widow Dare and John Sprake's wife, dwelling in Dolman's 
 house, as being common hedge tearers, and that they doth 
 bake buns contrary to the statute. 
 
 Very probably these individuals were not regular bakers 
 who could be under the eye of authority with respect to 
 keeping the assize, or selling at the price or in the form 
 assigned by the magistrates. 
 
 * Archaeological Society, Report, 1844. 
 G G 
 
450 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Every baker of Castle Combe was to bake penny, half- 
 penny, and farthing bread. At the same place, in 1594, 
 two bakers were named to the jury of the Manorial Court 
 as common bakers pants humani, and as such they had each 
 to pay 3rf. for the exercise of their art.* 
 
 Just as classical learning was called human learning, and 
 in Scotland is now styled humanities, so a finer bread was 
 dignified by the learned scrivener of the Court as panis hu- 
 manus, to be rendered white bread. Some of the black 
 bread furnished those in the dark house fell not under this 
 human term. 
 
 The book in which the assize of bread was entered was 
 handed over from mayor to mayor, as one of the articles 
 forming a part of the town stuif. The baker of King 
 Henry VIII. was enjoined not to put alum in the bread, 
 nor to mix rye, oaten or bean flour with the same, under 
 pain of the stocks. 
 
 The advantage of a public bakehouse was enjoyed at Lyme 
 in 1669, as we learn from a presentment of the oven as en- 
 dangering the setting the town on fire. 
 
 In another place wiU be found mention of the discipline of 
 the cucking-stool, for bakers selling short weight at Vienna, 
 so late as 1775. 
 
 Beer, curious Local Orders, Laws, and Particulars 
 respecting. 
 
 When we consider the importance that attached to beer, as 
 furnishing two meals of the four that mortals call their daily 
 portion, viz. the morning and evening draught, before tea 
 and coffee were introduced, or spirits were in common use, 
 we may expect that the good mayors and juries at court 
 leets and courts of hustings had much to engage their atten- 
 tion in reference to this beverage. 
 
 The assize of bread and beer, which dates from an early 
 period, is not the subject that has now to be treated of. 
 
 * G. P. Scrope, Hist, of Castle Combe. 
 
ALE-TASTERS. PRESENTMENTS. 451 
 
 This was held in our western boroughs with due observance. 
 Some of our interesting accounts of presentments of brewers, 
 and the causes which drew upon them the animadversion 
 of juries, fall more within the province of these pages. 
 
 The residents of the manor of Bleadon, Somerset, in the 
 14th century, who brewed beer for sale, paid to the lord four 
 gallons by way of toll. 
 
 The invaluable entries in the archives of the Scrope family, 
 lords of the manor of Castle Combe, Wiltshire, enable us 
 to add much to our previous knowledge. These entries of 
 orders about beer date from so early as 1456, the reign of 
 Henry VI.* 
 
 The ale-tasters presented Thomas Cokesale for refusing 
 to sell ale to his neighbours, while he had some on sale, and 
 even while the sign [the Ale-stake] was out. He was fined 
 
 4:d. 
 
 In 1461, one Lautroppe was presented for having, con- 
 trary to the order, brewed three times under one display of 
 the sign or ale-stake. For this he had to pay Gd. We un- 
 derstand, that upon setting out the sign, that beer was on 
 sale, the ale-tasters (tastatores cerevisice) proceeded to per- 
 form their oflSce. This man offended by brewing three 
 times, and only making the usual signal for one brewing. 
 This, had it not been detected, would have enabled him to 
 sell two brewings without the liquor having been tasted 
 by the proper ofScers, and the public might have had ale 
 sold to them " not sufficiently mighty of the corn, or whole- 
 some for man's body." 
 
 To meet this perhaps growing evil practice in 1590 (22 
 Eliz.), it was ordered. That no innkeeper, common brewer, 
 or typler shall keep in their houses any fewel, as straw or 
 verne, which shall not be thought requisite, and being 
 warned of the constable to rid the same within one day, sub- 
 pcend, xxs. f 
 
 This order was made against the danger of fire, and to 
 
 * G. P. Scrope, Esq., M.P., History of Castle Combe, for Private 
 Circulation. 
 
 f History of Castle Combe. 
 
 G G 2 
 
452 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 prevent tipplers from having the means of conducting these 
 fiirtive brewings. Here the public good was aimed at. 
 
 No one was to brew, in 1461, at the same time as the 
 churchwardens were brewing the church-ale for the profit of 
 the church, under pain of 13s. 4rf. ; nor (a.d. 1464) to brew 
 or sell till all the ale brewed for the church was entirely 
 sold. This was brewed for the benefit of the common fund 
 for the relief of the poor, a.d. 1590.* 
 
 When the Archbishop of Canterbury should visit his land 
 at Tarring (near Worthing), in Sussex, in 1277, four gallons 
 of the best beer were to be charged only Id. If bad it was 
 to be staved, and a halfpenny or penny charged for the 
 vessel, t 
 
 The price of beer at Castle Combe in 1464 was, for 
 
 d. 
 
 Best beer, per gaUon - - - 2 
 
 Second - - - - - 1 
 
 Third - - - - - OA 
 
 In 1557, the price had advanced as follows: — 
 
 d. 
 
 Best ale under the hair sieve, per gallon 3 
 
 Stale - - - - - 4 
 
 Second ale - - - ' ^i 
 
 And when it is stale - - - 2 
 
 Smallest ale - - - ' ^i 
 
 Best ale in their houses, a wine quart - 1 
 
 Without the door - - - Qi 
 
 They are to sell out of their houses as long as there is 
 three gallons in the house. 
 
 No brewer there, in 1590, was allowed to sell his grains 
 out of the town if the town dwellers will buy them at 2d. 
 the bushel. This was very high; the same is now sold at 
 4rf. the bushel. 
 
 It was ordered at Marlborough, a.d. 1524, by the mayor 
 and council, that the brewers should sell of the — 
 
 * History of Castle Combe. 
 
 t Cartwright's Rape ofBramber. — Wartek. 
 
BEEWEKS. — PRESENTMENTS. — LAWS. 453 
 
 d. 
 Best ale, 12 gallons - - - 16 
 
 This rose to 20d. in 1532. 
 One thurindole - - - " 0^ 
 
 2 gallons of small ale - - - 1 * 
 
 In the reign of Henry VIII. (35th year) Isabella Stansby 
 and another, common brewers at Lyme, were presented for 
 brewing ale not " mighty of the corn," but, on the contrary, 
 too thin and unwholesome, and for selling the same in un- 
 lawful measures, for which each was fined Qd. (serevis' brassi- 
 cav' nimis tenue et insalubre et vend' per mens' illicit.') 
 
 The orders for brewers are not a few f, no less than for 
 tipplers, or those who sold tipple or drink.J The ale tasters 
 had an important duty to perform. 
 
 In 1572, it was ordered that none of the ale brusters do 
 from henceforth brue but with fewell, and not with hard 
 wood or faggot-wood, upon pain for every time of so doing 
 of 5s. § It is curious that in London the dread of fire caused 
 a law to be made at an assize of beer in 1212, that no baker 
 should bake, or ale-wife brew by night, or with reed, straw, 
 or stubble, only of wood.|| 
 
 Six conunon brewers only, and retailers of ale and beer, 
 were appointed in 1578 at Lyme, besides the brewer " who 
 doth and shall keep the Beer House." There is some 
 doubt as to what we are to understand by this house ; it is 
 perhaps the same as is mentioned elsewhere as the brew- 
 house. 
 
 Had only the laws enacted upon this subject been fully 
 carried out, the moral condition of boroughs would have 
 been perfect. No tippler or retailer of beer was to sell to 
 any craftsman or servant of the town, except he was in com- 
 pany with a stranger. 1[ Such laws or town orders as this 
 
 * Waylen's Marlborough. 
 
 t Single Sheet MS., Archives of Lyme. 
 
 X See Court of Hustings' Book, 1592—1602, p. 567. 
 
 § Fuel had become scarce in the West. 
 
 II MS. Add. Brit. Mus. 14,252. 
 
 ^ Court of Hustings' Book for Lyme. 
 
 GG 3 
 
454 SOvJlAL HISTOET OP THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 never were or could have been carried out, and so became 
 a dead letter. In 1612 an order was made that no one should 
 tipple any one day above one hour in any house. 
 
 Fifteen tipplers were presented, in 1582, aa having made 
 default in the orders. None were to sell beer except in 
 hooped pots. Jugs and cups were expressly forbidden in 
 1614 J all beer was to be sold by ale quarts ; none hence- 
 forth adores in cornes, i. e. drinking-horns.* 
 
 The ale sellers, in 1584, were to sell three pints for IJ.f 
 At Castle Combe the price was \d. a quart; second kind, |^rf. 
 a quart. 
 
 In 1594 and 1596, some of the tipplers at Lyme, and 
 vintners also, were fined 406'. each for allowing unlawful 
 games in their houses. 
 
 There was in Elizabeth's reign a Brew House which, in 
 1616, was rented by Steven Chick at 5Z. a year, and there is 
 an entry of payment for coal, 22Z. 10s. 
 
 In 1658 appears an explanatory entry in the Corporation 
 Order Book, " Agreed to take a lease of a house from H. 
 Henley, Esq., for a public Bkew House for the benefit of 
 the poor inhabitants." 
 
 The renter was under agreement to brew beer at a certain 
 price, and to be regulated by the authorities. 
 
 Before tea and cofiee were in use a family consumed more 
 beer, what with the morning and evening draught, than in 
 the present day ; hence the saving which constituted the 
 benefit. 
 
 Solomon Andrew, Mayor of Lyme, paid, in 1658-9, 
 Thomas Parsons and William Phillips 2s., for their advice 
 about a brew house. In after years there were ring-houses 
 where a small holder of an orchard could have his apples 
 made into cider. 
 
 In 1600 the ale and beer sellers had to find sureties in lOZ. 
 each to keep the orders and conditions. These " Articles 
 
 * Hist. Castle Combe as to the Cornes in 1569. 
 
 t In 1587 the price of the best ale at Leicester was IJrf. ; of the 
 second ale, \d. ; and of third ale, J(f. per gallon. 
 
TIPPLING. — UNLICENSED HOUSES. 455 
 
 for the Observance of the Alehouse-Keepers " and beer 
 sellers bear a great resemblance. Those in force at Wey- 
 mouth, in 1642, were eleven in number. 
 
 Drunkenness was punished by a fine of 5s. ; but this sum 
 was worth more than three times the same amount imposed 
 in the present day for the ultimate and perfect end of drink- 
 ing — intoxication. The approach towards this state, the 
 voluntary preparation for it, — ^tippling, the being found on 
 the high way to intoxication, — is now neglected. In Charles 
 I.'s reign the fine imposed was 3*. Ad. What would be the 
 aggregate of prices in this country if every one found sitting 
 about at public houses was fined 10s. ? 
 
 No less than twenty-six persons of sundry trades were 
 fined each 3s. Ad. for being common frequenters of alehouses 
 in Sherborne and Castleton, in 1636. 
 
 So much has appeared about the unlicensed alehouses, 
 that the form of proceeding in granting a license, while new 
 to many, may prove interesting. The magistrates having 
 been informed that a certain ancient house in Coleman Lane, 
 near the market place, Shaftesbury, the property of Albinus 
 Muston, of Shaston, gent., had been a house of entertainment 
 of travellers, men and horses, for seventy years, and being 
 now re-edified could receive one hundred horses, they agreed 
 that this house shoidd henceforth be reputed, taken and used 
 for and as a common inn, and have all the privileges belonging 
 to an inn.* 
 
 A great quantity of beer was sent to Guernsey and Jersey 
 from Poole, in Elizabeth and James I.'s reign. This expor- 
 tation led to litigation, as the corporation demanded from 
 the common brewer an impost of 4*. per brewlock of three 
 tuns, or about Id. per kilderkin. Such an imposition might 
 appear an exaction in the present day ; but we should con- 
 sider what onerous duties corporations were formerly called 
 upon to fulfil. The defence of the coast near fell upon 
 these sea-port boroughs, and not upon the powers who ruled 
 over the kingdom at large. 
 
 * Blr T. Hearn, " Qui Quondam." 
 
 G G 4 
 
456 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 In Charles the First's reign, the borough authorities 
 very generally (if not universally) forbade ale-wives to 
 brew. When these worthies, the mayors, were despotic, 
 they not only forbade as they could do, but dictated the 
 course they would have pursued. At Weymouth the ale- 
 wives were ordered not to brew, but to buy of the common 
 brewers, while the latter had the price to be charged fixed 
 by authority. 
 
 'No innkeeper or tippler that might conveniently be 
 served by any common brewer, admitted or to be admitted 
 within the town of Lyme, was to brew in their houses, but 
 buy of the common brewers, and such drink only, and of 
 such reasonable size as should be fit for travellers and 
 passengers, and such as the mayor and his brethren should 
 set down as fit, and of such a price. The price settled 
 for the ale-wife in two towns was as follows : — 
 
 Lyme. Weymouth. 
 
 d. d. 
 
 The better sort of ale under the range 3 3 
 
 Middle - - - - 2 
 
 SmaU - - - 1 1 
 
 The brewer was to sell the best ale at 6d. the barrel, 
 the smallest at 3d. At Lyme, if the tippler brewed himself, 
 the ale was to be such as might be sold at the above rate. 
 
 From some cause apprehension of a great scarcity was 
 entertained in 1630. The Lords of the Council addressed 
 letters to the magistrates for the suppression of the super- 
 fluous number of maltsters, who were judged to be one main 
 cause of the scarcity of corn, and likely to be the means of 
 a dearth, which it was feared would ensue. Agricultural 
 statistics were not more understood than general ones. The 
 Court ordered that no person whatever in the county of 
 Dorset from henceforth do presume, by any ways or means, 
 to convert any grain into malt, except such as are farmers 
 of grounds, and have corn sufficient growing on their own 
 
EESTEICTIONS OF THE MAGISTRATES. 457 
 
 demesne fit for that purpose, until such time as their 
 license shall be renewed again by public authority.* 
 
 The grand jury of Dorset at Easter, 1636, complain of 
 neglect respecting the laws regulating the sale of beer. 
 There had been no assize set on beer and ale sold to ale- 
 house-keepers by the common brewers at Sherborne, or else- 
 where in the county of Dorset [we suppose for the year]. 
 
 The system appears in a transition state. The public began 
 to like that beer should be sold according to its value, and that 
 some beer should be brewed of greater strength than could 
 be sold without loss at the price set at assize. 
 
 The magistrates, after due consideration, did not choose 
 that the public should have the choice of buying strong beer, 
 but that this beverage should be sold at 12s. the hogshead, 
 and the smaller sort at 9s. the hogshead. 
 
 The sellers had offended by selling out of jugs and cups, 
 and not by ale quarts, contrary to the statute. The magis- 
 trates in the midst of their arrangements, full of respect 
 for a great man, relax the stringency of every rule, order, or 
 regulation, whether enjoined by law or not, if it was pre- 
 judicial to any of the liberties of John, Earl of Bristol, 
 within his manor of Sherborne, which the Earl was to use 
 as he had been anciently accustomed. 
 
 The magistrates had learned how the alehouse-keepers 
 humoiu:ed the taste of the day, by brewing their own 
 beer of extraordinary strength, so as to please the public, 
 and sell the more, owing to the superior excellency of the 
 liquor. This was done, too, by small measures; so that, 
 though the price was the same, the quantity was diminished, 
 to meet the improved quality. The authorities forbade all 
 these innovations. t 
 
 The constables of Weymouth reported at court day, in 
 1617, that out of every alehouse the stoning-pots were 
 broken by them. 
 
 How were borough authorities to act upon the exclusive 
 
 * Mr. T. Hearn, " Qui Quondam," Book of the Dorset Sessions in MS. 
 t Mr. T. Hearn, " Qui Quondam," from MS. Book of the Proceedings 
 
 at Dorset Sessions. 
 
458 SOCIAL HISTOBY OF THE SOTJTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 system in respect to beer ? This was as difficult a point as 
 the introduction of steamers on the Swiss lakes with regard 
 to the boatmen. About the year 1650, foreign beer, which 
 means beer brewed out of the borough, was brought into 
 Weymouth to be sold by innkeepers, to the prejudice of 
 many, i. e. the town brewers. The corporation decreed 
 that twelvepence a hogshead should be paid, and this sum 
 to go to the poor. How clearly did the legislators benefit 
 by this bye law ! In Switzerland, steamers have to pay 
 something each trip for the benefit of the boatmen, whose 
 employment ia greatly diminished. 
 
 No flesh was to be dressed or suffered to be dressed 
 within any victualler's house at Lyme on any forbidden day, 
 saving in case of necessity arising from sickness ; while at 
 Castle Combe no innkeeper was to dress any flesh on Fridays 
 and Saturdays under pain of 5s., and the eater of the same, 
 2s. &d. Thus both parties, obnoxious to a charge of a 
 breach of the orders, were punished. At Lyme alehouse- 
 keepers were fined, in 1609, IZ. 3s. Qd., as an entry shows; 
 and alehouse haunters were taught to their cost that they 
 were not dwelling in a borough without laws. Another 
 entry shows that two of the latter had paid a fine of two 
 shillings each. 
 
 How the private tradesman was liable to be interfered 
 with will be learnt in respect of the brewer, or common 
 brewer. 
 
 No innkeeper or tippler that might conveniently be served 
 by any common brewer, admitted or to be admitted within 
 this town, was to brew in their houses, but buy of the 
 common brewer, and such drink only and of such reasonable 
 size as should be fit for travellers and passengers, and such 
 as the mayor and his brethren should set down as fit and of 
 such price. The best ale was to be sold at 3rf. a gallon, the 
 worst at 2c?. If the tippler brewed himself, he was to brew 
 such ale as might be sold at this rate. 
 
 No flesh was to be dressed or suffered to -be dressed 
 within any victualler's house on any forbidden day, saving in 
 case of necessity arising from sickness. 
 
ALEHOUSE-XEEPERS. — FINES. 459 
 
 The Commons, in May 1641, declared that the decree 
 made in the Star Chamber, prohibiting retailing vintners 
 from dressing meat to sell in their own houses, is Ulegal, and 
 against the liberty of the subject.* 
 
 Mr. Eobert Bragg, mayor, 1609-18, entered II. 3s. 6d. 
 for fines paid by the alehouse-keepers, and 4«. for fines of 
 two alehouse haunters. 
 
 " The rigid restrictions of the republican rule were also mani- 
 fested in the strict surveillance maintained over the people, with 
 the view of securing temperance in drinking. Convictions for 
 drunkenness are almost of daily occurrence. And it was fre- 
 quently the practice to remove all doubt as to the sufficiency of 
 testimony by producing the delinquent in court whilst under 
 bacchanalian influence. Many are the instances in which it is 
 recorded by the convicting justice that some unhappy offender 
 was " drunk in my view." They appear, moreover, to have been 
 in the habit of making nice distinctions as to the various grada- 
 tions of intoxication. Thus, whilst the earlier stages were taken 
 cognizance of as "tippUng," there was an intermediate stage 
 minutely described in the following extract from the information 
 of Ahce Wire, March 30, 1655 : — 
 
 " ' Who saith that John Keech was soe distempered with beere 
 that hee was not at that tyme as hee is wont to bee at other tymes, 
 for that hee slept by the ffire about an houre.' 
 
 " And on another occasion we are furnished with some criteria 
 of intoxication by an informant, who deposes, that 
 
 " ' As his conscience tells him the said Gardner was drunke, for 
 he could neither goe well but staggered, nor did he speake plaine.' 
 
 " Numberless entries shew that a party of four or five could 
 not sit together in the tap-room of a public house without in- 
 curring the risk of being informed against and punished for 
 tippling, that punishment being, in many instances, a pubUc 
 exhibition in the stocks." 
 
 The ale-wives of Castle Combe had broken all the orders 
 (a. D. 1568). The Court received the presentment in si- 
 lence. 
 
 The Quarterly Eeviewer writes, " One cannot help see- 
 ing them in high-crowned hats, with arms akimbo, making 
 
 * Verney Papers. 
 
 t Mr. Hearn, from the MS. Book of Dorset Sessions. 
 
460 SOCIAL HISTOHT OF THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 mouths at the court and jury sworn, and laughing outright 
 at the tithing-man and the rest of creation." This they 
 might have done in Queen Elizabeth's reign. Another 
 state of things was approaching. Ale-wives were influ- 
 ential in a little borough. How many took two meals a 
 day at the ale-wife's ! The traveller saluted mine hostess 
 on arriving and departing. 
 
 1584. The widow Brooke, ale brewer of Lyme, was dis- 
 missed from brewing and selling of ale for divers disorders 
 used in her house. 
 
 The Commonwealth men found the ale-wives, or women 
 tipplers, very disobedient to their orders, and did not hesitate 
 to have recourse to bodily punishment for the correction of 
 offenders in this particular. 
 
 In 1653, at the general sessions of the peace, when 
 Kichard Alford was Mayor of Lyme, and Edmund Prideaux, 
 Esq., Attomey-Greneral to the Commonwealth, recorder, the 
 jury presented Mary Somers, widow, for selling beer with- 
 out a license; and having been formerly convicted of the 
 same offence, it was ordered by the Court that she shall be 
 whipt according to the statute. 
 
 Winifred Somees, widow, Abel Thomas, &c., were 
 ordered to pay 20s. for the use of the poor, not having kept 
 the assize ; in other words, having disregarded the price 
 fixed by magistrates when they held an assize, or set for 
 that purpose. Those who dealt in any article of consump- 
 tion fancied they knew better than the authorities at what 
 price it could be rendered to the public. 
 
 Winifred Summers, or Somers, widow, was no less a 
 person than the widow of the brother of the celebrated 
 Sir George Summers, the admiral. 
 
 In 1656, the licensed beer sellers were presented for 
 selling less than a quart of the best beer for a penny, con- 
 trary to the statute. Each was to forfeit 20«.* 
 
 April 20, 1657, the constables presented Abell Thomas, 
 
 * Rules about beer at Southampton ; see Archseological Journal : — 
 In 1606, as malt was 2s. 6d. per bushel, and not above, the mayor and 
 justices order that after Easter Day the beer drawers shall not make or 
 sell but two sorts of beer, and shall sell the double beer at 3s. 4d. the 
 
STOPPING WELL-KNOWN FOOT-PATHS. 461 
 
 John Tucker, Mary Davy, widow, John Collyer, George 
 Alford, Mary Somers, widow, Thomas Templeman, Wyni- 
 frie Somers, widow, Elizabeth Low, widow, Philip Sand- 
 ford, and Joseph Sprake, for selling beer without a license, 
 for which they have severally forfeited the several pains in 
 the statute in that behalf incurred, viz., 20s. a-piece.* 
 
 On the 3rd Jan, 1658, Winifrie Somers, widow, appears 
 first on the list of those tipplers licensed to sell ale and beer, 
 and was bound under a penalty of 20Z. not to transgress the 
 five laws. These were — 
 
 1. Unlawful games. 
 
 2. Unnecessary occasion for drinking. 
 
 3. Drinking on the Lord's Day.f 
 
 4. Unreasonable hours of the night. 
 
 5. Disorder and misrule in their houses. 
 
 In 1675, seventeen persons were licensed to seU beer (ad 
 beria vendenda), each to keep good order, and to have his 
 corn ground at the town mill. 
 
 During the troubles, victuallers and alehouse keepers dis- 
 pensed with the common brewer and baker, and brewed and 
 baked for themselves. This practice was decried by the 
 authorities, as the assize of bread, beer, and ale could not be 
 observed. But the obsolete bye-laws could not be again 
 acted upon. At Marlborough, after the regulation of the 
 borough in 1663, one of the first acts of the council was to 
 endeavour, but ineffectually, to revive the obsolete laws. 
 
 The stopping well-known Foot-paths. 
 From the first year when any human being could call a 
 rod of land his own, a path was probably straitened, or an 
 
 barrel ; the ordinary at 2s. A few years later, when malt was at 2s. 
 and hops at 8Z. the hundred, the double beer was sold at 4*., and the 
 ordinary at 2s. Gd. 
 
 In 1631, the vintners were not to sell their Gascoigne wine at more 
 than M. a quart. 
 
 * Court of Hustings' Book, p. 221. 
 
 t Hist, of Castle Combe. Beer not to be sold during divine service, 
 nor after nine o'clock at night. 
 
462 SOCIAX HISTOET OF THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 attempt "made to stop it, if the doing so brought greater 
 advantage than leaving it untouched. When land became 
 very valuable, then the practice was confirmed. Were it 
 not for some watch-dogs, who look out for the encroach- 
 ments of the selfish and unjust, the rights and conveniences 
 of the many would be sacrificed to the wary few. No one 
 being specially commissioned to iindertake this office, oppor- 
 tunities are embraced from time to time to make some 
 inroad upon the rights of the public. The matter in com- 
 plaint may not lie concealed ; but the difficulty of inducing 
 the only partially interested to come forward, — the difficulty 
 about the expense to be incurred, indecision, the public 
 mind being engrossed at the time by some grand topic, — 
 all conspire to render the accomplishment possible, if not 
 easy. 
 
 It is honourable to the discernment and justice of men 
 of past generations that they were sensible of the value 
 and importance of foot-paths. King Edward the First 
 caused an inquisition to be made by the Sheriff of Sussex 
 as to any damage or nuisance that would happen to the 
 king, or others, by the diverting a pathway in the town 
 of Chichester by the Master of St. Mary in that city. The 
 king allowed the path to be stopped up only upon the 
 making another competent pathway, reserving the rights 
 of every one.* 
 
 That the population of our great cities should be unable 
 to reach the beautiful country, and enjoy with their chil- 
 dren the lovely paths through the corn and hay-fields, is 
 the inevitable result of their inhabiting so widely spread 
 a Babel. It is, however, really distressing to those who 
 view the environs of small country towns to observe, that 
 many old paths have been stopped, and that the population 
 are in some localities becoming no better off than the road- 
 confined inhabitants of cities. Some official should be 
 charged with this matter; and private encroachment should 
 be assailed as a matter of course by him at the public charge. 
 What pleasure can be more pure, more health-inspiring, 
 
 * Sussex Archseol. Coll. 
 
ADVANTAGES OF A RIGHT OF WAY. 463 
 
 than a walk through the open fields? Let us preserve 
 every old right of way around our beautiful country. What 
 is lost in such a case only adds a mere trifle to the means 
 of one whose heirs will not perceive the advantage gained 
 to the detriment of the comfort, the health, and pure enjoy- 
 ment. Many, however, can exclaim in the words of the 
 poet : — 
 
 " I have trod 
 That path from child to man times beyond count, 
 And followed through it the still varying year 
 From spring to summer. Had it led to heaven 
 I could not love it more — and all the folk 
 That owned our parish church, aged and young, 
 Loved it no less ; the child for its own sake. 
 And for his pleasant use of it — the old, 
 For that 't was once to them a lover's walk, 
 And now in darkness and decline of age 
 A tender memory — but what-was this. 
 And all the soul of gentleness beside, 
 To the cold spirit that only loves itself, 
 And hates whate'er may baulk it in self-love ? " * 
 
 An early presentment made at Castle Combe introduces 
 an offender who was fined : — 
 
 1389, Oct. 21. Decena prsesentat quod Thomas Touker, iid. 
 appropria vit sibi de communi via vocata Halpenejwey arando de 
 dicta via ad nocumentum, ideo ipse in misericordia.t 
 
 Near Axminster is the manor of Weycroft, where stood a 
 mansion house in the castellated style, erected soon after the 
 year 1400, by Sir Thomas Brooke, the ancestor of Lord 
 Cobham. In 1416, the heir to the estate obtained a royal 
 license to crenellate the mansion, and enclose a park of 800 
 acres. In the course of the formation of this park, Joan 
 the widow of Sir Thomas Brooke, obstructed several public 
 roads and paths. 
 
 The state of society did not allow, perhaps, of an asso- 
 ciation of humble individuals to resist the powerful lady of 
 
 * " Ernest," a poem privately circulated by Capel Loft, 
 t Scrope's Hist, of Castle Combe. 
 
46-t SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Holditch, Lyme Regie, and Weycrofifc. The battle for the 
 restoring the public rights had to be waged by the head of 
 a neighbouring family of great distinction. Sir William 
 Bonville, of Shute House. Avoiding lengthy details, we 
 will only state that Nicholas Wysebeach, the Abbot of 
 Newenham, and five of the abbot's neighbours, were ap- 
 pointed mediators. They decided every point in favour of 
 the public champion. Sir William Bonville, and directed 
 that all the ways should be thrown open. The good abbot 
 had been nominated by the Lady Brooke out of respect to 
 his justice and hospitality. Abbot Wysebeach ought to 
 have been canonized as the prince of arbitrators. Such an 
 office was not to him, hearty soul ! a dull matter of statis- 
 tics, or humdrum matter of business. He would not send 
 the defeated party to pine over disappointed hopes, and 
 the victor to inordinate display of triumph. That monk 
 must have been born with an eye for a tableau. By his 
 award a procession that a Watteau should have depicted was 
 formed. After the paths were reopened — business over 
 first — the knight and the lady were to ride together about 
 a mile and a half to Newenham Abbey, below Axminster, 
 on a day appointed, where they were to exchange a kiss in 
 token of peace and friendship, and dine together at the 
 abbot's table ! A blessing on all such ending of strife. 
 Should a painter want a subject, here is one ready at hand. 
 The scene lies in South-east Devon ; but the meadows by 
 the river Axe, the red earth and the scenery, should render 
 this unmistakeable.* 
 
 The warmest admirers of Queen Elizabeth's reign must 
 acknowledge that if it exceeded in advantages the present 
 day, it closely resembled, and was on a par with the latter, 
 in a disposition manifested by many to encroach in various 
 ways upon the rights of the public to paths and common 
 places. The antiquity of path-stopping will surprise those 
 
 * The deed in the possession of the devisees of the late Mr. Frampton 
 has been quoted by J. Davidson, Esq., of Secktor, the historian of 
 Xewenham Abbey. 
 
PATH-STOPPING. — PENALTIES. 465 
 
 who view such a propensity as a growth of very recent 
 times. 
 
 The examples given of path-stopping are, with one ex- 
 ception, purposely confined to one locality ■ — Lyme Regis. 
 
 In 1584, it was ordered at the Lyme Court of Hustings, 
 that Richard Davidge do leave open the way, according to 
 the old custom, that leadeth into the Great Field before 
 the Feast of St. John the Baptist, upon pain of 20*. 
 
 At Leicester, about this time, it was ordered that all 
 the common lanes and common places taken in within the 
 remembrance of man shall be laid open again.* 
 
 Some of the principal inhabitants of Lyme, in 1594, 
 made a presentment that Silvester Jurden hath showed 
 himself disobedient, in that he hath refused to remove his 
 gate set upon the way going out from the churchyard to the 
 eastern cleeves, and also hath refused to pay the amerciament 
 laid upon the law day for setting up the said gate to the 
 annoyance of the Queen's people, f 
 
 In 1596 the jury found that Mr. Robert Hassard hath 
 enclosed a plot of ground which hath been in common time 
 out of mind, and sithence the way is foundred. In another 
 presentment the way was said to be strayted. 
 
 This was by St. Andrew's chapel on the way towards 
 Uplyme. St. Andrew's Lane, Cross and Wells, are localities 
 now not known by these names. 
 
 Mr. Robert Hassard, in 1598, furnished matter for a 
 presentment, by taking into his ground some part of a 
 lane beyond John Calley's house, and taking the bond- 
 stones (boundary) leading down the way to the Cobb. He 
 was ordered to make it as before, under pain of 20s. 
 
 A view was taken of the locality, and the measurement 
 entered into the Court of Hustings Book, 
 
 Mr. Robert Hassard was amerced, in 1599, the sum of 
 fourpence for having locked a gate, and stopped people from 
 going to the Cobb. 
 
 Mr. Walter Harvey was presented, in 1597, for having 
 
 * Nichol's History. f Freeman's Book, p. 291. 
 
 H H 
 
466 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIE^i. 
 
 enclosed the way upon the down, called Colway down, by 
 the crooked oak, which ought not to be. 
 
 John CoUier was fined 6s. 8d. in 1612, for encroaching 
 upon the highway at Shells going up to Lanchycraft. 
 
 In 1665 the widow Stone was presented for altering the 
 footpath in Barre Close, leading to Colway Bridge. Would 
 that parties had been found to present every one who has 
 wilfully closed for ever paths of the greatest utility to the 
 town. 
 
 In 1647, Mr. John Parrat enclosed a lane leading from 
 Pound Street to the Stile, — • also another lane leading to a 
 spring of water which served for the use of the inhabitants 
 adjoining, and also straightening the highway a little below 
 the pound. Robert Reed stopped a passage through his 
 entry down the cleeves towards the Cobb being a common 
 passage in 1677. 
 
 A great path case respecting the right of way through 
 the Pinney Undercliff, west of Lyme, which had been 
 litigated for four years, was decided in favour of the public 
 and reopened Sept. 28th, 1843. 
 
 The desire to close paths has, we see, existed from early 
 reigns, and many of them, could we only learn the fact, 
 have been preserved by the exercise of public spirit. Be 
 on the alert my countrymen. A duty is owed to posterity. 
 
 Merchant Adventurers' petition to be allowed to continue to trade 
 and kidnap on the Coast of Africa. 
 
 Should the question be asked, "Was the worst feature of 
 slavery — kidnapping — ever tolerated in conversation, or 
 deliberately committed to writing by one engaged in it ? We 
 answer in the affirmative. 
 
 So late as the year 1700, the merchants of the ports of 
 South-western England found kidnapping profitable, and 
 openly petitioned for liberty to continue that horrible traffic. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. — IMPORTANT PETITION. 467 
 
 All sorts of frauds were practised in order to procure 
 white labour. The Monmouth men had been liberated from 
 their ten years' banishment to the West Indies at the revolu- 
 tion ; which made the demand greater. The procuring per- 
 sons to go out to the West Indies used to be spoken of in 
 odious terms by the old people, at the beginning of this cen- 
 tury. If they were correct, all sorts of unfair practices were 
 resorted to. 
 
 The following important petition from some of the last of 
 our foreign merchants does not require the aid of an inter- 
 preter : it speaks in plain language and with our present 
 humane views upon the subject draws forth deep reproba- 
 tion. 
 
 Slave Trade.* 
 
 " Petition of the Merchant Adventurers of the Town of Lyme 
 Regis to Parliament, humbly sheweth, 
 
 " That the trade of this port and your petitioners' livelihoods 
 very much depends on the western navigation and plantations, 
 whose productions are chiefly raised by negroes brought from 
 Africa. 
 
 " That by encouragement of the late Act of Parliament (9 & 10 
 William III. c. 26.) for opening of the African trade, divers 
 of the merchants and inhabitants of this town became adven- 
 turers therein. 
 
 " The petitioners hear that the African Company have been 
 trying to obtain a monopoly of the said trade in a joint stock 
 company exclusive of all the outports, therefore they pray to be 
 allowed to continue to trade to the plantations and kidnap on the 
 coast of Africa." 
 
 Who at this date judged there was anything at all wrong 
 in buying, keeping, or selling slaves ? If any one did so he 
 must have been before his age or have been deemed to be 
 eccentric. Kidnapping was, however, a branch of commerce 
 in slaves that is not to be often found described or alluded to 
 by the parties engaged in it. At the beginning of this cen- 
 tury we may conclude that every branch of slavery was 
 
 * See Corporation Papers: Sketch of Petition about 1699 or 1700. 
 
 HH 2 
 
468 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 deemed allowable and as having nothing wrong in it. Negro 
 boys had been, in the time of the Commonwealth, in the 
 service of fashionable persons. These had been imported 
 from the Portuguese settlements. The Puritans polled their 
 negro servants like themselves. 
 
 In the " Tatler " of 1709, a black boy, twelve years of age, 
 fit to wait upon a gentleman, was offered for sale.* How 
 negroes were purchased and instructed on board a frigate is 
 elsewhere narrated. 
 
 The payment of the burgesses of Parliament formerly ; their 
 travelling expenses, &;c. 
 
 When the first parliaments were called, the frame-work of 
 society was in perfect contrast with that of the present day. 
 In no particular will a comparison prove more interesting 
 than in that of circumstances respecting what pertains to the 
 " Burgesses for the Parliament." 
 
 The borough tradesmen courted no honour in being chosen 
 for burgesses : therefore tbey were not disposed to pay any- 
 thing. On the contrary they travelled, more properly, rode 
 at the cost of those who had chosen them ; and were paid by 
 the day while absent in the discharge of their duty. There 
 was very probably some slight honour reflected upon the 
 parties chosen in the eyes of their townsmen. Perhaps the 
 more discreet were selected, the more bold or hardy. 
 
 The burgesses sat apart from both barons and knights, who 
 disdained to mix with such mean personages as the burgesses 
 were then regarded. They had no voice in deliberative 
 proceedings, and their consent being given to the taxes re- 
 quired of their boroughs, they separated, though the parlia- 
 ment continued sitting. The burgesses of parliament were 
 chosen, temp. Henry V., at the county court. 
 
 * Quarterly Review, June, 1855. 
 
THE NORTH AN UNKNOWN EEGION. 4G9 
 
 The first representatives of Lyme Regis, at the Parliament 
 holden at Canterbury, in 1295, WiUiam Tuluse and Geoffiry 
 le Ken, had to furnish each of them two sureties (rnanucap- 
 tores), and each received 2s. a day. This was not bad pay, 
 considering the relative value of money. 
 
 Glanville Sharp states there were only 145 places that 
 sent members to this Parliament.* The burgesses from 
 Lyme Regis went to perform an office they could not refuse, 
 being tenants of the king. Robbers, a want of bridges, dis- 
 tance, no stated regular communication with their homes, 
 and neglect of their private business, made the performance 
 of the duty an onerous one. Those burgesses afforded the 
 greatest amount of satisfaction to themselves and their 
 fellow-townsmen — we would hardly use the word consti- 
 tuents — who stayed the shortest possible time. 
 
 When they returned they brought their bill of daily 
 charges and travelling expenses, both for going and return- 
 ing, which was addressed as a Writ de expensis to the mayor 
 and bailiffs, t The Dorset burgesses from Lyme never made 
 their appearance at the Parliaments holden in the north, — a 
 distant and dreaded unknown region, — from 1295 till 1306. 
 
 Chard only sent burgesses to Parliament from 1300 to 
 1329. The town grudged the expense of sending members, 
 and so disused and lost the privilege. The knights of Corn-^ 
 wall about this time charged 2s. 6d. for each day's expenses 
 and took seven days to make the journey. In Blomefield's 
 Norfolk we find that in the year 1403, 5th Henry IV., the 
 king's writ came to Norwich by which four citizens were to 
 be returned to Parliament instead of two. This additional 
 expense to the city in wages was considered such a burden 
 that 31. were paid to John de Alderford to get the matter 
 altered, which was effected. 
 
 In 1323, however clever the burgesses of Lyme may have 
 been, their services could not have been very valuable as they 
 only stayed p. iiii. dies, four days ! This delay was perhaps 
 
 * Report of Committee, temp. James I. 
 
 t See William Atte Gate, and Geoifrey le Cok's writ, tested at ^\'est- 
 minster in 1311, in the Close Rolls, m. 16. d. 
 
 HH 3 
 
470 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 only what their horses required by way of rest. Here, as in 
 so many other cases, we may well reflect upon the altered 
 features of society, and contrast the riding away on horse- 
 back of our ancient burgesses with the railway travelling of 
 their successors. To fairly chronicle these matters is the 
 object of these pages. 
 
 The Lyme archives furnish nothing for about two cen- 
 turies, as Hustings books are wanting. The entries under 
 the Tudor sovereigns are illustrative of the state of society. 
 Mr. Richard Hunt, mayor in 1554, had provided some money 
 in advance towards the burgess, or member of Parliament. 
 
 s. d. 
 Item, y' I have layd liowtte for y"^ towne to Mr. Mallocke 
 (of Rusedon) for hys charges to be borges of Ple- 
 ment - liii iiij 
 
 To be levied at the Comenes hands and no others. 
 
 This sum was most ijrobably paid to Mr. Mallocke on 
 starting for the place of the meeting of the Parliament, 
 wherever that locality happened to be. This portion was 
 to be raised from the inhabitants generally, and not from the 
 brethren, merchants of the guild, from the burgesses and 
 free men, who were to be assessed, and bear their share of 
 the burden in some other way.* Doubtless the memoran- 
 dum refers to a clerical arrangement in the levying the 
 smu, and does not dictate a partial and therefore unfair 
 assessment. 
 
 The mayor, John Holcombe, in 1559, acknowledges the 
 receipt of 5Z. 6s. %d. from William FoUet and another for 
 such money as was gathered for the burgesses of Parlia- 
 ment ; and more is to be gathered of Robert Moore, John 
 Hassard, and Richard HaibaU. 
 
 We have seen how nearly three centuries from this date, 
 1571, the burgesses were paid two shillings a day and 
 their expenses. AYhat change had such a long course of 
 
 A free burgess posses-eJ a freehold, and was made free by a fine and 
 Iiy an oath : a freeman bad no freehold. 
 
PAYMENT OF BURGESSES. 471 
 
 years effected ? Can this be ascertained with certainty ? — 
 are questions that readily present themselves, and will find 
 at once a satisfactory answer. 
 
 William Ellesdon, when mayor of Lyme in 1571, made 
 up his account for parliamentary service as follows : — 
 
 " For the tyme I was burgess of the parliament for 65 days, at 
 2s. the day, viz. 61. 12s. from the 29th March to the 2nd of June. 
 And further, that I spent the same time over and above 2s. the 
 day for me and my man and two horses the sum of 51. 3s. 6d., in 
 all amounting to the sum of 12Z. 17«." 
 
 The daily pay and travelling charges of the burgesses of 
 the parliaments were borne by the borough that consigned 
 these worthies to distant journeying, and in many cases ill- 
 suited and uncongenial duties. At the very first our 
 western boroughs deemed this a burden, which some 
 relieved themselves from by not obeying the writs, as in 
 the case of Chard. The burgesses sent to the early parlia- 
 ments were tradesmen of their respective boroughs, the 
 Commons of the realm, not holden in much repute. In 
 1295 they are alluded to as alii de regno, " others of the 
 realm," as if not worthy to be specified or designated — a 
 slighting phrase.* 
 
 In the course of years a higher class of persons felt a 
 desire to be in Parliament. Some of these could do good 
 service. They were active, influential, and repaid their 
 hire by their useful exertions ; other individuals, perhaps, 
 not finding themselves likely to render much service, 
 while the townsmen were unaware of any great work to be 
 performed. There are appearances of mutual concessions, 
 and the making of terms for attaining an honourable post 
 and relieving themselves of a considerable burden. 
 
 The paid burgess of the Parliament worked for his em- 
 ployers, and learned for them, before he perilled his life 
 in a long journey by dangers to be encountered by " flood 
 
 * Farry's Parliaments and Councils of England. 
 
 H H 4 
 
472 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 and field," how he could be useful. " To instruct our 
 burgess " meant very differently from anything similarly 
 worded in the present day. The employers and employed 
 stood in a very different light to the voters, and the rich, 
 perhaps illustrious, member of the present day. During the 
 whole of the session the burgess was ready to be employed 
 in advancing the interests of his borough at court by the 
 tortuous processes so often recorded. 
 
 It was agreed in Parliament, a.d. 1580, that any burgess 
 departing without a license should forfeit his wages. About 
 the year 1604 a motion was made in the House that 
 absentees should pay 20*., but which fine was reduced 
 to 6s. 8d. 
 
 In the third year of Edward the Fourth's reign, John 
 Sackvylle, Esq. agreed to be one of the burgesses for 
 Weymouth, at the Parliament to be holden at Westminster, 
 " if holden long time or short, or what it fortune to be, 
 taking for his wages there a cade of mackerel (500 mackerel) 
 though two been delivered, by Christmas next coming." * 
 " Though two been delivered," I read " though two cades 
 have been customarily delivered." 
 
 John Wadham the younger, 4th February, 1558, in the 
 reign of Edward VI., captain of Sandsfoot Castle, came to 
 terms with the neighbouring electors, whose borough he 
 helped to guard. He agreed by a paper to serve Mel- 
 combe Regis in Parliament as a burgess, without pay, 
 whatever the law might give him.f 
 
 It may be fairly said that these two adjoining boroughs 
 laid themselves out to bargain for a burgess that would not 
 be a burden to them. A letter is inserted to show the open 
 treating to secure this object. | 
 
 "(3 Jan. 1558-9.) 
 " To my loving frendes the maior and his brethren of the 
 town of Melcombe Regis. 
 " After my liartie commendacons, understanding by the return 
 of yoiu" gentill answers your readynesse and good will to accom- 
 
 * Ellib's Hist, of Weymouth. f Sherren Papers. J Ibid. 
 
EARLY TREATING AT ELECTIONS. 473 
 
 plyshe my request for the nomination and appointment of one of 
 the Burgesses for your town of Melcombe Regis against the next 
 Parliament already summoned and shortly to be assembled, lyke 
 as for the same I have thought good to nominate John Moynes 
 of Bruteport, and to notify in like manner the same unto you, so 
 presuming you accordingly to admit him, I hereby promise unto 
 you to discharge you of such ordenary and dayly stypende for 
 him whom I name and appoint, as in the like case you and others 
 have heretofore been accustomed to gyve to the burgesses for 
 their attendance in your affaires, there giving you and every of 
 you my hartie thanks for your gentilnes, which I will not forget, 
 with the pleasure I may do you at any tyme to recompense. And 
 so I byd you hartily farewell, from the Court, this iij of January, 
 1558. 
 
 " Your loving frende, 
 
 " F. Bedford. 
 " Maior of Melcombe." 
 
 So early as the year 1640, voices were unduly procured 
 by inviting to alehouses. Hobby, a candidate, struck one 
 who procured voices against him.* 
 
 Human nature remains only what it has appeared in all 
 historical time. The ready spoken in Elizabeth's reign 
 were apt at elections to promise too freely ; the recipients 
 of favours and the expectants of benefits often doubtless 
 looked for too much. Hence disputes arose between the 
 contracting parties as to the performance of the conditional 
 agreements. 
 
 At the passing of the town accounts at Leicester in 
 1582, some did mislike that Mr. Stanford, the burgess, had 
 been allowed his charge for the Parliament last past, for 
 that they declared he said when he was chosen burgess, he 
 would not crave his charge except he did good to the town. 
 It was thereupon agreed, that if he do at any time good to 
 the town, then his charge to be allowed ; otherwise he is 
 to repay again that which he hath received for his charge 
 for the two Parliaments past.f 
 
 * Verney Papers, by J. Bruce, Esq. 
 f Nichol's Hist, of Leicester. 
 
474 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 No sooner was a seat in Parliament generally spoken of 
 as a distinction, an honour, an object of the ambition of the 
 great men of the day, than the former reluctance to take 
 the office was changed into a readiness to embrace any 
 opportunity for obtaining a seat in the House. As the 
 burgesses now sat with the knights, and debated with them, 
 some higher qualification than before was necessary ; educa- 
 tion had been received by all, at least to a certain extent. 
 The imperfections of an uneducated man would be strikingly 
 apparent. 
 
 This was the case with the burgess sent from Westbury, 
 Wiltshire, in 1571. He appeared to be unsuitable to the 
 office he had assumed, and we learn from the following 
 very naive account how the matter ended. This has been 
 named the first case of Beibeet in which mere money 
 supplied the place of family and education. We learn that 
 Thomas Long, a very simple man, and unfit to serve, is 
 questioned how he came to be elected. He confesses that 
 he gave the Mayor of Westbury and another Four Pounds 
 for his place in Parliament. They are ordered to repay 
 this sum, to appear to answer such things as should be ob- 
 jected against them in that house, and a fine of twenty 
 pounds is to be assessed on the corporation and inhabitants 
 of A^estbury for their scandalous attempt.* 
 
 Xot only were gentlemen found very anxious to sit in 
 Parliament, but so early as the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century that species of fraud, since classed as election 
 trickery, was well understood and practised. A remarkable 
 instance of successful deception practised to win an election 
 is here given, which proves the before-named proposition ; 
 the narrative contains some mention of the practice of wear- 
 ing a great man's liverv, and the interference and great in- 
 fluence of lord-lieutenants with corporations to secure the 
 return of their favourite. 
 
 jNIr. George Belgrave, of Belgrave, had offended the Earl 
 
 * Parry's Parliaments and Cuundls of England, See Notes aud 
 Queries, May 12. 1854. 
 
ELECTION TRICKEKY. 475 
 
 of Huntington, Lord-lieutenant of Leicestershire, 1601, 
 who recommended two candidates, and in strong language 
 warned the corporation against electing one so displeasing 
 to him. The earl had learned that Belgrave " still con- 
 tineweth his great practising in labouring to be chosen." 
 
 The above gentleman appeared at the election of the 
 burgesses in a blue coat with a buU head, affirming and pro- 
 testing that he was the Earl of Huntington's servant, and 
 so wore his lordship's livery, having obtained that favour 
 late the night before through the intervention of Sir Henry- 
 Harrington. The artful candidate bemoaned his undutiful- 
 ness to the earl ; and when asked if he brought any letter, 
 he excused the circumstance owing to the lateness of the 
 hour the preceding night when his peace had been made, 
 but pointed to his coat and cognizance as a sufficient proof 
 of the earl's favour, and offered to take a corporal oath to 
 the truth of his statement. The mayor and his brethren 
 were deceived by this "cunning practisore," and elected 
 him. The earl exhibited an information in the Star Cham- 
 ber against Mr. Belgrave.* 
 
 Some burgesses of the Parliament had multifarious duties 
 to perform for their constituents, who sometimes furnished 
 occasion to be reminded that mean matters were not suitable 
 to men of high breeding. Their borough correspondents 
 were at times reminded that council business alone would 
 be attended to by them.f 
 
 The burgesses of Poole gave power to the Earl of Bed- 
 ford, at his special suit and request, 13 Elizabeth, to nomi- 
 nate one of their two burgesses. 26 Elizabeth, the same 
 burgesses allowed the Earl of Leicester to nominate a re- 
 presentative. Giles Estcourt, Eecorder of Poole, 27 Eliz. 
 A.D. 1585, wrote to the mayor and burgesses to desire that 
 he might have the nomination of one of the biu-gesses, 
 either for his own son, or some other person that he would 
 
 * See Notes and Queries, for an article by William Kelly, Dec. 10. 
 1853. 
 
 t See Gentleman's Magazine, Sept. 1852, for an account of the SLer- 
 ren Papers containing such a letter. 
 
476 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THK SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 undertake should be a fit one, and should discharge the 
 place without any charge to them, while the applicant, the 
 recorder, engaged to be thankful for the favour. 
 
 The Earl of Warwick, in 1586, requested (through two 
 friends) the mayor and burgesses of Poole, that they would 
 nominate the young Earl of Bedford, his lordship's ward, 
 for the sake of his grandfather. Like others who ask 
 favours, Thomas Horsey and George Trenchard, who sent 
 the earl's letter, took care to lessen the estimate of the 
 service to be rendered in these words, " we hope there shall 
 not neede much speach or great entreatie, yor selves know- 
 inge how small the courtesie is, and how thankfuU it will 
 be taken." 
 
 At Leicester, H. Skipwith, Esq., and Thomas Johnson, 
 one of her Majesty's serjeants-at-arms, were appointed bur- 
 gesses of the Parliament in 1584, and either of them pro- 
 mised to bear their own charges.* It was agreed that Sir 
 Ralph Sadler, Knt., Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 
 should nominate one.f So at Lyme Regis, Zachary Bethel 
 was chosen, 29 Jan. 1593-4, a burgess of the Parliament 
 by the JNIarquess of Winchester, while the mayor, bur- 
 gesses, and freemen elected Robert Hassard. In some 
 counties the lord-lieutenants pretended to have a control 
 over the elections. 
 
 John Hassard, burgess of Parliament, worked for the 
 town with great diligence in 1584.f There is entered, 
 
 £ s. d. 
 Paid for expences of the burgess the first Parliament, 
 
 1584, before Xmas - - 8 15 
 
 Second Parliament after Xmas, all that Parliament 
 
 time liim and his man, and for riding, charge up 
 
 and down 12 8 
 
 Expenses of the Lower House for passing a bill 8 10 
 
 Higher „ „ - 16 9 
 
 His charge the first Parliament, 57 days, and riding 
 
 up and down, and fees to the house and Serjeant 12 13 4 
 
 • Xicliol's Hist, of Leicester. -I" Ibid. 
 
 I Town Accompt Book, p. 53., and four following pages. 
 
SPITEFUL TKEATMENT OF VOTERS. 477 
 
 Additional evidence can be produced to show that seats 
 in Parliament were often much coveted. This was a matter 
 of notoriety in Charles the First's reign. 
 
 The interest exerted to secure a vacant burgesses place 
 for Liverpool in 1670 was remarkable. The Duke of Mon- 
 mouth and Lady Southampton wrote in favour of Mr. Ross, 
 his grace's early tutor, and the whole affair as recently dis- 
 played is very interesting.* The Duke of Monmouth ap- 
 pears to have made a practice of writing to corporations in 
 favour of some partisan. 
 
 We will adduce an instance of spiteful treatment of 
 those individual voters of a town that did not support a 
 great man's candidate, as a punishment for their preference 
 of another great county man. 
 
 Soldiers being billeted in Taunton, Sir John Stawell, of 
 Cotheleston Lodge, near that town, earnestly canvassed the 
 inhabitants to have all their votes for the two burgesses of 
 the Parliament. He was told by them they had reserved 
 a vote for Sir Robert Phillipps, of Montacute House, but 
 that he should have the other. Sir John Stawell took 
 offence at this; and removed some soldiers that were al- 
 ready billeted out, and billeted them upon the mayor and 
 others. 
 
 Mr. John Mohun had interfered, as was reported, in 
 some election in Cornwall, and was, like Sir John Stawell, 
 believed in the west to have been sent for by the Par- 
 liament and honoured by the court.f 
 
 A highly interesting accoimt of travelling to London, 
 stay there, and sundry charges for searches of charters, 
 fees of office, &c., exists, on a single foolscap sheet, among 
 the archives. If this be not the account of John Hassard, 
 the burgess of the Parliament, when paving the way for 
 the incorporation of the town, which I fully believe it to 
 have been, it was that of some other worthy, whose style 
 of living, expenses of travelling, &c., were the same. I 
 
 * Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1853-54. 
 t t)iary of Walter Yonge, Esq., M,P. 
 
s. 
 
 d. 
 
 11 
 
 6 
 
 18 
 
 6 
 
 33 
 
 11 
 
 478 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 extract the entries illustrative of this part of the sub- 
 ject : — 
 
 1586. 
 For my charges to London and from London, and during 
 my being in London, and for divers other charges for 
 the town. 
 
 First for my charges to London (144 miles) 
 
 Item, riding to the Court at Windsor at divers times, and 
 
 once with a man to attend me - - 
 
 Item, paid for horse meat during my being in London - 
 Item, paid Mrs. Beymes for my table (i. e. board) during 
 
 my being in London - - - - - 50 
 
 Item, paid for boat hire, breakfast, and for wine at my 
 
 meals, and for fire during my being in London - 21 7 
 
 Item, paid for washing of my shirts - - - 20 
 
 Item, given to the two maids of the house - 12 
 
 Item, given to Humphrey and to John for dressing of my 
 
 horse - . - - - 12 
 
 Item, paid to Simon Fry for the hire of his mare and 
 
 shoeing of her to London 11 
 
 Item, paid for my charge from London - - 16 4 
 
 The ancient burgesses of the Parliament were paid, as 
 we have recorded, their wages and charges. It is likewise 
 a fact that they applied themselves with great energy and 
 perseverance, just as any agent or attorney now a day would 
 do, to serving the borough. They were no sinecurists. 
 The townsmen furnished duties for them to perform. 
 
 Mr. Robert Hassard spent twenty-three weeks in London 
 in 1590 to procure a renewal of the fee-farm rent from the 
 crown. How intimately connected was this burgess of the 
 Parliament with his constituents — his employers and payers! 
 He charges among other matters : — 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 A. large box, and for a lock and key for the charter - 4 
 The hire of a horse from London to Windsor when 
 
 my horse was lame - - - 2 6 
 Boat hire from London to the court [at Greenwich] 
 
 at several times - - - 1 
 
PARLIAMENTARY EXPENSES. 479 
 
 Paid to Forster for carriage up and down of my £ s. d. 
 
 things for four times - - - - 19 
 
 For hire of a horse up and down from London for 
 
 four times - - - - -2 13 4 
 
 [13«. Ad. for hire to London and back, both ways, 
 
 288 miles.] 
 My expence for myself and my man for twenty-three 
 
 weeks - - - - 26 18 
 
 Item, paid for my chamber several to myself - - 1 
 
 A page of the Lyme Regis Court of Hustings' Book for 
 2 Nov. 1584 possesses, for more reasons than one, unusual 
 interest. Let us consider it in reference to our subject. 
 
 It was agreed at a court held in the Moot Hall, that as 
 well the burgesses and freemen, as well inhabitant as not 
 inhabitant, as all other inhabitants, shall be contributory to 
 the payment of taxes and impositions to be levied towards 
 the charge of the burgesses for the Parliament. 
 
 The burgesses chose two assessors on their parts; the 
 mayor and his brethren two on their parts. 
 
 £ s. d. 
 Li 1587. Mr. Hassard's account for the Parliament 
 
 was - - - - 7 
 
 1593. Mr. Robert Hassard's charge and fees at the 
 
 Parliament - - - - 22 8 
 
 1604-5. Sir George Summers, the great admiral, had 
 
 his allowance of charge at the Parliament 10 
 1606. Ditto ditto 10 
 
 1616. Mr. John Hassard had the rest of his ac- 
 
 compts of Parliament - - - 2 1 4 
 
 1821. Allowed Mr. Robert Hassard at his going to 
 
 London to be a burgess in Parliament - 6 13 4 
 
 Another instance of money paid in advance. 
 Entries in the Town Accompt Book in the mayoralty of 
 Wm. Davy, 1623-4 : — 
 
 s. d. 
 Item, paid Mr. Poulett's man being sent hither about the 
 
 burgesship, a quart of claret wine - - - 6 
 
 Item, provided a dyner for Mr. Drake and his company 
 
480 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEEX COUXTIES. 
 
 at their being here about choosing a burgess, which s. d. 
 
 uost - - 40 
 Item, for provision made for Mr. Eobert Hassard, our 
 
 burgess, when he came from the Parliament - - 10 
 
 The good townsmen learnt all the news while partaking 
 of refreshment with their burgess just arrived from the 
 distant metropolis. 
 
 A few other entries : — 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Item, paid to Sir. Eobert Hassard for a box to return up 
 
 the writ ----- 12 
 
 Item, paid for my horse hire and the Serjeants when we 
 rode to Sir. Drake upon his return from the Parliament, 
 and for a box of marmalade, and 4 lbs. of dry suckett, 
 and a bottle of wine given to his wife - - 11 
 
 Item, sent to Mr. Drake and to Sir John Drake at seve- 
 ral times upon their return from the Parliament, 2 
 quarts of sack and 2 quarts of claret wine - 3 
 
 A collation to Sir John Drake and Mr. Eobert Hassard 
 
 when they returned from the Parliament - - 10 
 
 Entertaining Mr. John Drake and his company coming 
 to town for a burgess' place upon the death of Mr. 
 Eobert Hassard - - - - - 16 9 
 
 Members of the corporation of Coblentz and other towns 
 having been chosen to serve as "peers" in the Prussian 
 Chamber, in 1854, refused to accept that honour unless the 
 towns paid their expenses. 
 
 Are we destined to revive obsolete customs ? 
 
 Early travelling in the south-west of England; the manner 
 in which it was performed ; the cost of a journey on horse- 
 back, and the introduction of stage coaches, ^c. 
 
 What more probable than that within a few years the 
 writer of facts connected with this subject may be thought 
 
GREAT CHANGES. — ENACTMENTS. 481 
 
 to have been creating not recording a past, and that pos- 
 terity will not yield credit to what is herein recorded? 
 This stamps our time as that proper for submitting incidents 
 to the present generation of which they can certify the 
 truth. Some previous knowledge is required in order to 
 entertain certain subjects. 
 
 Three centuries have not rolled by without producing 
 mighty changes in the face of the country, in habits, in 
 prices, and in the relative bearing of the constituent parts 
 of society upon one another. In treating of the expense 
 of sending burgesses to Parliament, mention was neces- 
 sarily made of the cost of their journeys to the Parliament 
 and back, which is properly a branch of this subject. 
 When great men were expected, the way by which they 
 were to enter the borough was " mended." This, however, 
 in many instances was not the way by which the town is 
 now entered. There is now a road ; the former entrance 
 was by a lane, perhaps in quite a different direction. Jour- 
 neying was once costly, slow, and often, to distant parts, 
 impossible. Communication by letter between distant re- 
 latives could not be maintained, except in certain parts. 
 All these things produced immense effects, as the altered 
 circumstances have done in the whole framework of so- 
 ciety. 
 
 There was no security for the traveller from his fellow 
 men. Hampshire was notorious in the time of the Plan- 
 tagenets for its bands of freebooters. 
 
 It was enacted, in 1285, that the highways leading from 
 one market town to another should be widened, so that 
 there might be no bushes, woods, or dikes within two hun- 
 dred feet on each side of the road; and those proprietors 
 who refused to cut down underwoods abutting on high 
 roads were to be held responsible for all felonies that might 
 be committed by persons lurking in their covert.* 
 
 The last wolf was killed in Scotland in 1680; in Ireland, 
 in 1710. 
 
 * H. Turner's Domestic Architecture. 
 I I 
 
482 SOCIAL HISTOET OF THE SOTJTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 A great authority, Mr. Macaulay, treats of the different 
 appearance of a cockney and a country lord of a manor, and 
 of the unsuitableness of the one to the other, and the in- 
 civility that took place when these came in contact. 
 
 If country hated town, there was a reciprocity of feeling 
 on the part of town. Insecurity was anticipated in being 
 among our own countrymen far from home. " Cousin 
 John, I've cut a good black-thorn that '11 stand your 
 friend," said an old relative to a young man, sixty years ago, 
 who was about to visit the metropolis. Such a thought 
 would hardly enter the brain of any one at present. Single- 
 stick, when exercised, is so for that particular exercise's sake, 
 and not for self-protection against our own countrymen in 
 our own land. The tailor dresses the man of country and 
 town more and more alike every day, and the fusion will at 
 length be complete. 
 
 The same great writer adds, " The chief cause which 
 made the fusion of the different elements of society so im- 
 perfect was the extreme difficulty which our ancestors found 
 in passing from place to place. Of all inventions, the 
 alphabet and the printing press alone excepted, those in- 
 ventions which abridge distance have done most for the 
 civilisation of our species. Every improvement of the 
 means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intel- 
 lectually as well as materially, and not only facilitates the 
 interchange of the various productions of nature and art, 
 but tends to remove national and provincial antipathies, 
 and to bind together all the branches of the great human 
 family." 
 
 In this century many have been saluted in London with 
 this inquiry, " AVhat, all the way from Dorset ? " It was 
 the tailor's fault, that the west countryman was so readily 
 distinguished from a Londoner. The Dorset tailor now 
 visits the metropolis for the fashions. Puttenham, in his 
 " Art of Poesie," lays down as the correct rule for speech 
 or writing, " The usual speech of the Court and that of Lon- 
 don, and the shires lying about London within sixty miles, 
 and not much above." 
 
BAD KOADS. LANDING OF BDWAED III. 483 
 
 The knights of Cornwall, in the reign of Edward 11., 
 claimed their expenses for seven days going to Parliament, 
 and the same time for returning, at 2s. 6d. a day. Taking 
 into account the relative value of money, they could make 
 the journey cheaper by raUroad, and twelve days would be 
 saved each session. 
 
 When our mayors and their brethren left the precincts 
 where their supremacy lay, to ride into the country at a 
 time when flocks of bustards were to be seen upon our 
 downs, and the population was very inconsiderable, — we 
 mean three centuries ago, — it might be judged that all par- 
 ticulars of their journey are lost. It is not so, however. 
 These worthies entered every penny expended in their 
 official capacity, and little entries give an insight into very 
 interesting matters. Thus, in the archives of Lyme for 
 the year 1552, may be learnt how near to borough towns 
 lay a terra incognita : — 
 
 s. d. 
 Item, paid when Mr. Mayor and Mr. G-arland did ride to 
 
 Mr. Pledges (Play's ?) to one to teach them the way - 2 
 
 Item, for our paynes touching to come home when we 
 
 might lie out - - - - - 1 
 
 So bad and unknown were cross roads, that guides, shep- 
 herds, and persons of a like degree, were usually hired to 
 conduct travellers from one town to another, especially if 
 it were desirable to take a shorter route than the high road. 
 In the absence of bridges it was necessary to have persons 
 well acquainted with the fording places of rivers or streams, 
 or fatal accidents might occur.* King Edward I., in 1299, 
 had seventeen guides when he went from Dover to Chiches- 
 ter, and round to Canterbury. 
 
 King Edward III. landed at Rye in May, 1360, and 
 started immediately on horseback for London, where he 
 arrived at 9 o'clock the next morning. This was a royal 
 instance of great dispatch, f 
 
 * Hudson Turner's Domestic Architecture. 
 f Eymer, iii. 490. 
 
 II 2 
 
484 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Sir W. Springet's lady had great difl5culty, in 1643, to 
 hire a coach to Arundel at all, because of the bad road. 
 She did so at last for 12Z. Her sick husband died, leaving 
 just that sum in his possession. The waters were out; 
 both coach and horses had to be swum in the highways, 
 while the lady was rowed in a boat. Well might King 
 Charles say, when such were the highways, that he wanted 
 dragoons, and that the rebel's foot had no inclination to 
 winter-marches. 
 
 Ralph Thoresby, the antiquary, lost his way between 
 Doncaster and York, more than a century later ; and Pepys 
 and his wife, travelling in their own coach, lost their way 
 in Charles the Second's reign near Salisbury, and were in 
 danger of having to pass the night on the Plain. The 
 country continued little better than a wilderness tUl the 
 middle of the seventeenth centur}-. 
 
 Charitable good souls left lands and valuables for the 
 making of causeways, such as ]\Iaud Heath's Causeway, 
 near Chippenham, in Wiltshire, and the making and mend- 
 ing of feeble bridges and foul ways. 
 
 Archbishop Islip, a mediseval prelate, the founder of 
 Canterbury Hall, in Oxford, was not exempt from the sore 
 inconveniences of early travelling. The chronicler tells us 
 how, in riding from Oxford Palace to Mayfield Palace, 
 Kent, in 1362, he fell from his horse in a wet and miry 
 lane, between Sevenoaks and Tunbridge, so that the arch- 
 bishop was " wet through all over." In that pitiable state 
 he rode on without any change of clothes, and was seized 
 with paralysis. 
 
 INIr. John Garland, merchant, Mayor of Lyme in 1569, 
 rode to London on town business. His whole charge for 
 himself and horse in London was 31. 5s. ; the hire of the 
 horse was 5s. 
 
 Mr. Roger Keate, who frequently journeyed for the cor- 
 poration of Weymouth, set out to transact business in 
 London : — 
 
 1578-9. 
 
 Jan. 21. Reached Blandford at noon. Foul weather, so he re- 
 mained all night, at a cost of 3s. 3d. for himself and horse. 
 
ACCOUNT OF ROGER KEATE, 485 
 
 22. Salisbury at noon. 
 Andover. 
 
 23. Basingstoke. 
 
 24. London at noon. 
 
 His ordinary table for 82 days, two meals a day, were 
 Gd. a meal. 
 
 Fire, drink in the mornings and other times [equivalent to our 
 
 breakfast and tea meals], two pence a day. 
 Horse meat, eight pence a day ; occasional shoeing of the horse, 
 
 eight pence. 
 
 The horse was sold away : we may conclude it was Ms 
 own. 
 
 The charge for shoeing a horse, which had been 6d., rose 
 in 1581 to 10c?. and I2d. 
 
 Washing his shirts for 79 days, four shillings, or about 4irf. per 
 
 week. 
 Two pair of shoes for himself, with soleing and mending, 3s. 4rf. 
 For a pocket, because his pocket was all torn with the carreiage 
 
 of the money, 6d. 
 Given among the folks, i. e. the servants of the house where he 
 
 lay, I2d. 
 A scrivener for writing letters, 3s. 
 
 Mr. Keate could write, but not beautifully ; could indite, 
 not " make a letter" in its due form and style. 
 
 When H. Frances rode to London on the town affairs, there was 
 advanced him, B6s. 
 
 Eoger Keate paid, 1579, for boat hire to and from Avelye in 
 Essex, XV miles, 3s. 8d. 
 
 A dinner at Greenwich, where townsmen from Weymouth hap- 
 pened to meet, 12d. a head. 
 
 The spirit of clanship waxed strong ; and the agent does 
 not blush to enter a meal at double the visual charge upon 
 an occasion when he was expected to do as his fellow- 
 townsmen did at their meeting so far from their home, in 
 
 I I 3 
 
486 SOCIAl, HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 a part where the Dorsettians were viewed as " outside bar- 
 barians " by those so near the Court. 
 
 Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, the judge, under Wolsey, wrote 
 the following, which was very appropriate when long jour- 
 neys were performed on horseback : — 
 
 " An excellent rude lesson, in rude rhyme, for an under serv- 
 ing man to say ev-ery time when he taketh horse, for his remem- 
 brance, not to forget any implement behind him. 
 "Purse, dagger, cloak, nightcap, kercheffe, shoeing horn, budget, 
 
 and shoone (shoes), 
 Spear, nail, hood, halter, saddle-cloth, spurs, hat, and thy horse 
 
 comb, 
 Bow, arrows, sword, buckler, horn, leash, gloves, string, and the 
 
 braser, 
 Pen, paper, ink, parchment, red wax, pumise, and books do thou 
 
 remember. 
 Penknife, comb, thimble, needle, thread, and point, least that 
 
 perchance thy girth break. 
 Bodkin, knife, rubber, give thy horse meat, 
 See he be shod well, make merry, sing if thou can. 
 And take heed to thy needments that thou lose none." 
 
 A journey in West Dorset and Devon, on horseback, 
 from Weymouth, in the reign of Elizabeth* : — 
 
 d. 
 Bread for my horse - - - - - i 
 
 Dinner at Borport - - - - - - vi 
 
 [Birport, Burport, since Bridport.] 
 Horse meat that same time - - - - - ii 
 
 Supper at CoUiford - - - - vij 
 
 [From Charmouth to Colyford by Colway Lane, at the 
 bottom of which was Horn Tavern. The traveller 
 avoided Lyme by leaving it on his left. Leland 
 writes that the bridge was not passable at high water. 
 It is not always possible to follow the road in floods. J 
 Horse meat same night - - - - - vi 
 
 Breakfast, Friday - - - - - iiij 
 
 Supper at Exmouth - - - - - vi 
 
 * Sherren Papers. 
 
TRAVELLING EXPENSES. 487 
 
 d. 
 
 Horse - - - . - - vi 
 
 Passage at Exmouth - - - - ii 
 
 [Over the Exe.J 
 Breakfast - - - - - - - iiij 
 
 Dinner at Tor - - - - - - vi 
 
 [About two centuries after this four or five houses 
 were built by the sea, at the quay, where a great 
 town, Torquay, has grown up.J 
 Horse meat - - - - - ii 
 
 Passage at Tynemouth - - - - i 
 
 [No bridge over the Teign.] 
 Supper the same night - - - - - vi 
 
 At Dartmouth, when with Mr. Mayor, for a quart of wine 
 
 given him - - . - . v 
 
 Given him that made the letter - - - - vi 
 
 [To the scrivener who was skilled in the due forms of 
 
 letter writing, and a suitable address of the great.] 
 
 Given him a quart of wine . . _ yi 
 
 Supper the same day ----- viij 
 
 Horse meat in Kingswear - - - - xvi 
 
 [The horse was left on the east side of the river.] 
 Passage at Dartmouth - - - - - ii 
 
 Horse hire, viii days . - - - viii«. 
 
 Self at xiirf. a day as moch - - - - viii*. 
 
 Abstract. 
 
 Expenses of journey, about 164 miles - - - 8 4 
 
 Horse hire - . - - - 8 
 
 Pay to the traveller - - - - - 8 
 
 Fuller saw an ancient lady being drawn to church near 
 Lewes in her own coach, by six oxen. Trees were drawn 
 on Sussex roads by two-and-twenty oxen. A journey 
 from Lewes to London, in the last century, was barely 
 performed in two summer days. The Rev. Giles Moore 
 went in June, 1660 : — 
 
 £ s. d. 
 His lodging in town cost him, per week - - 5 6 
 
 Beer, sack, and meat - - - - -117 
 
 The same gentleman crossed the Solent to the Isle of 
 Wight : — 
 
 I I 4 
 
SOUTHERN 
 
 COUNTIES. 
 
 
 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 1 
 
 10 
 
 _ 
 
 . 
 
 
 4 
 
 _ 
 
 - 
 
 
 6 
 
 nd a horse 
 
 - 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 _ 
 
 _ 
 
 
 4 
 
 488 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE 
 
 Passage for man and horse 
 
 Passage - - - 
 
 Man and landing 
 
 Cowes to Portsmouth, two persons and a horse 
 
 Boating us 
 
 When royal proclamations were sent forth, their echo soon 
 appeared in local municipal bye laws. King James pro- 
 claimed that carts and wagons with four wheels, carrying 
 excessive burthens, so galled the high ways and the very 
 foundations of bridges, that the king denounced them to the 
 judges as common nuisances against the weal public, and 
 the use of them an oiFence. By this proclamation of 
 James I., in the year 1622, no carrier was to travel with a 
 four-wheeled wagon, but only with a cart having two 
 wheels, and only to carry 20 cwt. Any one transgressing 
 this was to be punished. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth's State Carriage. 
 
 The coach was first introduced in 1564, by William 
 Boonen, a Dutchman, who became coachman to the Queen. 
 
 After this expression on the part of the king, we may ex- 
 pect something similar in borough magnates. 
 
 In the year 1635, when, perhaps, pack-horses did all the 
 carrying that was required at Weymouth, and probably 
 there was no vehicle in the town besides, the brewers had 
 what are now called brewers' carta to carry out their beer. 
 The authorities passed a bye law that no brewers were to 
 bind the wheels of their carts with iron, as it wore away the 
 pitching of the streets. Precisely similar was the complaint 
 
COMPLAINTS AGAINST HACKNEY COACHES. 
 
 489 
 
 against hackney coaches in 1638, viz, that they broke up 
 the streets. 
 
 No one was, by an order, to pass over Gosling's bridge in 
 Lyme, in 1583, with a wain, under a penalty of 20s. ; a very 
 heavy imposition.* 
 
 It having been thought proper to ordain, in the year 1662, 
 that the wheels of each cart or wagon should be four inches 
 in the tyre, this was found to be impracticable, for in some 
 parts the ruts could not receive such wheels, nor could the 
 carriages pass. A proclamation stayed the prosecution of 
 offenders till the further order of Parliament, f 
 
 In the time of James I. fish-jobbers rode off with strings 
 of pack-horses, bearing dorsers of fish, received from 25 
 fishing boats at Lyme, to supply the metropolis. | 
 
 Leland, in the middle of the reigu of Henry VIII., 
 praises Salisbury market for flesh, but particularly for fish. 
 He states, " A great part of the principal fish that is taken 
 from Tamar to Hampton (Southampton) resortith to this 
 town." This proves that pack-horses did carry some commo- 
 dities to a greater distance in a short time. 
 
 Hackney coaches were established in London in 1625, 
 and were first licensed in 1660. Sedan chairs were first 
 seen in 1581. 
 
 Hackney Coach. 
 
 * Archives ofWeymouth and Lyme, 
 t Proclamation, Soc. of Antiquaries. 
 
 X In 1855, a woman engaged some one in London to send her fish 
 to Lyme for sale ! How railroads reverse the order of thini's. 
 
490 SOCIAL HISTOKT OP THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Cosmo de Medici, Grand Dake of Tuscany, travelled in 
 this country in the spring of the year 1669. He set out 
 from Exeter to Honiton and Axminster in a coach, taking 
 half a day for the journey ; and reached Hinton House, the 
 seat of Lord Poulett, the following day. The remark made 
 after leaving Exeter is, " At first we suffered a good deal of 
 inconvenience, because we had to travel a road full of water, 
 and muddy, though not deep." 
 
 In bad weather the majority of the highways were im- 
 passable. Eight hundred horse were taken prisoners in 
 the civU. wars in Lincolnshire while sticking in the mire.* 
 
 Sir John Harrington had a neighbour who, being Sheriff 
 of Somerset, listened to a judge who complained of " stonie 
 roads, and feared much the dangers of our western tra- 
 vellinge," and gibed him thus : " In goode trothe, sir, it be 
 but fair playe that you, who so ofte make others feare for 
 their neckes, should in some sorte beginne to thinke of saving 
 your owne." Herewith Judge Minos was not well pleased, 
 but said : " Good maister sheriffe, leave alone my necke, 
 and looke to your owne heeles, for you may one daye be laide 
 by them." This judge afterwards fined the witty sheriff 
 five pounds. 
 
 Mr. Robert Jones, Mayor of Lyme, kept an account for 
 the town of his journey to London to surrender the charter. 
 Oct. 1. 1684. 
 
 This journey is interesting as belonging to the transition 
 period, partly on horseback, partly by public coach, the 
 return by a hired coach. 
 
 To London. £ s. d. 
 
 Oct. 1. Self and man to Sarum, and two horses [ex- 
 pences arising from inn charges for refreshments, 
 bait of horses] - - - 14 10 
 
 Hire of two horses to Sarum, and return home with 
 
 three horses, wages, and expences - - - 1 12 6 
 
 Coach hire from Sarum to London - - - 1 10 
 
 At several stages to gratify coachmen - 4 6 
 
 Total of expence to London - - 4 1 
 
 * Way Ten's Marlborough. 
 
TEAVELLIKG EXPENSES. 491 
 
 From London. 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 Hired coacli from London to Lyme [ Vetturino, like as 
 
 now-a-day on the Continent] with written agreement 8 
 
 Expended in our journey from London [the time con- 
 sumed must have been considerable ; the halts 
 many] - - - - - 3 17 
 
 Oats and hay at Lyme, and for giving the postillion - 16 
 
 Total expence of return - - - 12 13 6 
 
 A horse kept at the Blue Bear, and paid oastler and 
 
 tapster, per week - - - - 6 7 
 
 Charles Sydenham, the servant, allowed him abroad 
 [i. e. out of the house] for breakfast, evening draught 
 and Sunday dinner, 2s. 6d. a week for nine weeks - 1 2 6 
 
 This journey, be it remembered, was undertaken after the 
 setting in of winter, and the party returned in the dead of 
 that season. This accounts, probably, for the hiring a coach 
 all the way. It is likely that no public conveyances ran 
 even from London to Salisbury in the winter season. There 
 was advertised, in 1658, travelling as foUows : — 
 
 Stage coaches from the George Inn, without Aldersgate, 
 
 London : — 
 
 s. 
 To Salisbury in two days - - - xx 
 
 To Blandford and Dorchester, two and half days - - xxx 
 
 To Burpurt (Bridport) in three days - - - xxx 
 
 To Exmaster (Axminster), Hunnington (Honiton), and 
 
 Exeter in four days - - - - - xl 
 
 There were six regular stage coaches running in England 
 in 1662, some say in 1672. There was a fourday stage to 
 York from London in 1678. 
 
 The "Salisbury Journal" advertised, in 1752, that for 
 the better conveyance of travellers, the Exeter Fast Coach 
 starts every Monday from the Saracen's Head, Skinner 
 Street, Snow Hill, London. 
 
492 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Monday, dines at Egham. 
 
 „ lies at Murrell's G-reen. 
 Tuesday, dines at Sutton. 
 
 „ lies at Plume of Feathers in Salisbury. 
 
 Wednesday, dines at Blandford. 
 
 „ lies at King's Arms in Dorchester. 
 
 Thursday, at one o'clock, Exeter. 
 
 This was accomplished in summer. In winter, six days 
 were required. Fifty miles a day in summer, and thirty in 
 winter, was the distance. The dangers of the road were too 
 great for any one to risk himself on the outside. There 
 were six inside places. 
 
 Let us revert to the mayor, Mr. Robert Jones's, return 
 to Lyme. The driver of the hired coach, after having de- 
 posited the worshipful the mayor, was open to agree for a 
 job to London again. Persons availing themselves of a 
 return coach were led to speak of " the opportunity " that 
 offered, — so gelegenheit, " opportunity," is the name of a re- 
 turn carriage in Germany. 
 
 A family about to embark at Falmouth, in 1748, hired a 
 coach and horses in London. A party of young men availed 
 themselves of the opportunity to journey to the metropolis, 
 stipulating that in the event of their reaching a town at any 
 part of the day when cock-fighting should take place in the 
 evening, the coach should lie by for them.* 
 
 Travellers deposited their pads or packs, upon their arrival 
 in London, for security, with their goldsmith or banker. 
 The resemblance of one is to be seen sculptured over Child's 
 banking house. Fleet Street. 
 
 A person employed to take orders for another rode round 
 to his master's customers, and was, from the saddle-bags he 
 carried bebind him, called a bagman. See the wonders 
 worked by tbe figure rhetoricians call Euphemism. The 
 same useful member of society became a traveller, or com- 
 mercial traveller. The figure is expansive; and at length, 
 perhaps not finally, the word representative has obtained, 
 
 ' DaTies Gilbert's Hist, of Cornwall. 
 
BAD ROADS. — RUNNING FOOTMEN. 493 
 
 clashing with a higher appellation, the property of another 
 class. 
 
 Foreign journeys might formerly be called foreign rides, 
 for such they of course were. In 1509, Badver, the Vene- 
 tian ambassador, has proved that in mid winter he had rode, 
 at the age of 62, from Venice to London in twenty-six days. 
 
 The very bad roads, and consequent comparative slowness 
 in performing a journey, allowed the use of running foot- 
 men ; a class of retainers, however admired by the great, 
 doomed to extinction when the state of the roads was im- 
 proved. Some of the performances of these men were very 
 great. They carried a tall cane or pole with a silver ball 
 at the top, in which was white wine and eggs. The Duke of 
 Marlborough drove his phaeton and four to Windsor, only 
 just beating one of these men, who died soon after. These 
 runners wore no trousers, but only a short silk petticoat with a 
 broad fringe, remind one of the Hemerodromi, or day-runners 
 of the Greeks, one of whom was sent to Sparta from Athens 
 to announce the landing of the Persians.* In some parts 
 these running footmen supported their master's coach when 
 likely to overturn. Without them a journey could not have 
 been undertaken. 
 
 Running footmen are among the several particulars that 
 served as a mark to distinguish the very rich from those 
 simply rich. Many such distinctions in daily life existed, 
 which made it a costly matter for those inferior in regard of 
 riches to live with or make the same appearance as their 
 more fortunate neighbours. A greater equality in such 
 respects now prevails ; it is the richest persons who make 
 the sacrifice to uniformity. Take as an example the many 
 classifications of dress (enforced by sumptuary proclamations, 
 it is true) which distinguished men into very many classes, 
 according to rank or riches. 
 
 If the Exeter Flying Stage arrived from London to Dor- 
 chester in two days, and at Exeter at the end of the third 
 day, about 1739, the speed must have been considered 
 
 * Notes and Queries, No. I., 1856. 
 
494 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 surprising. Those who made use of such a conveyance 
 ■were doubtless looked upon as presumptuous, neck-or- 
 nothing mortals. 
 
 There vtsls a " Devizes chaise " from London at this time 
 which took a route through Reading, Xewbury, and Marl- 
 borough. 
 
 There is a good house at Morcomb Lake, east of Char- 
 mouth, now no longer in the road, o vying to this having been 
 diverted. This was a road-side ian, where the judges slept. 
 The Fly coach from London to Exeter sZe^^ there the fifth 
 night from town. The coach proceeded the next morniag 
 to Axminster, where it breakfasted, and there a woman 
 barber shaved the coach. 
 
 In 1772 the machine or flying machine ran from Bristol 
 to Plymouth in two days, which the rail accomplishes in four 
 hours and a quarter. It would be interesting, if at railway 
 stations ancient times of transport and modem ones were set 
 up for comparison, as was done at the opening of the Mul- 
 hausen railway. 
 
 The judges rode the circuit on horseback. Sir Nicholas 
 Hyde was censured for being attired in a whitish-blue cloak, 
 that he looked more Uke a clothier than a judge. He died 
 of fever from riding on circuit fifty miles one hot day. 
 The western gentry rode, and tradesmen rode and walked 
 in company for protection to the metropolis. An instance 
 can be adduced of a journey to London from the neighbour- 
 hood of Lyme in a coach, of whatever kind that may have 
 been, in James I.'s reign, ilrs. D'Ewes set out from Coaxden 
 Hall, near Axminster, on her road to London, and arrived 
 in one day at Dorchester, about 27 mUes. The shocks 
 sustained owing to the road, and perhaps the particular build 
 of the vehicle, were so great, that the infant son and heir, 
 afterwards the renowned Sir Symonds D'Ewes, cried so 
 violently all the way, that he ruptured himself, and was left 
 behind under the care of Mrs. Margaret Waltham, a female 
 practitioner of the county town of Dorchester.* It may 
 not be improper to state that Mrs. D'Ewes's premature con- 
 
 * See MS. Life of Sir Simonds D'Ewes in the Brit. Mus. 
 
MRS. D'EWES. — DANGER OF TRAVELLING. 495 
 
 finement was afterwards occasioned by a shock in a coach in 
 Bury Street. 
 
 Sir Symonds D'Ewes himself afterwards rode to London 
 from Coaxden in 1613, and attributes his safe arrival in the 
 metropolis to God's goodness, for he had one servant only 
 with him. Two reigns after this the sheriff of a northern 
 county supplied arms to the retinue of a judge who had not 
 been so prudent as to provide himself with weapons for 
 travelling in England. D'Ewes did not return into the west to 
 school at Wambrook, having felt with dissatisfaction that the 
 fare was very short and hard ; a customary fault at this time. 
 
 The same year John Clay went from Merryfield, at Ilton 
 near Ilminster, to Oxford, in 1613. The carriage or vehicle 
 was not drawn by horses. He charges thus : — 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Laid out for the oxen - - 5 10 
 
 Our suppers - - 4 
 
 Sope - - - . 4 
 
 And this latter article was so charged at every stage 
 nearly. 
 
 The travellers, arrested by the waters that were out, often 
 had to claim shelter at some neighbouring farmhouse. Nor 
 was the claim denied. Many old folk had to tell how a night 
 had been spent by the fire. Upon one occasion, where some 
 young ladies were thus delayed in Dorset, returning from a 
 ball, a worthy farmer read some passages from Shakspeare. 
 
 Our ancestors had not only to meet with interruption 
 where a flood rendered a ford impassable, there being no 
 bridge, but many bridges were so low that they were not 
 passable at aU times. In journeying from Dorset into 
 Devon, the Axe bridge, in Leland's tour, of two arches of 
 stone, served not to pass over at high (spring) tides, other- 
 wise he writes " it doth."* The state of the waters, whe- 
 ther " out or not,'' and " how long out," was a standing topic 
 with those about to travel and those on the road. 
 
 The fears for the safety of a relative who had taken a 
 journey to the distant metropolis were by no means ill 
 
 * Pulmau's Book of the Axe. 
 
496 SOCIAL HISTOET OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 founded. The dangers of the road, both in going and re- 
 turning, were acknowledged. The travelling over, safety 
 was still out of the case. A great city, upon whose his- 
 tory a whole nation looks with interest, was in the eighteenth 
 century a residence dangerous to the Londoners themselves. 
 Was there not a brutal society, that of the Mohawks, rakes 
 and drunkards who were banded tosether for violence 
 upon unprotected persons at night ? They sallied out to ex- 
 ercise the duties their mad order entailed upon them, and so 
 knocked down, stabbed, cut and carbonadoed people, — ho- 
 nest people about upon their calling — who were so unfor- 
 tunate as to happen to come in their way. Read Dean 
 Swift's caution to escape the INIohocks, or Mohawks, and 
 his fears. Sir Roger De Coverley went to the playhouse, 
 protected by Captain Sentry. To excel in brutality was 
 the aim of many who, jealous of rivals, emulated their deeds, 
 and laboured to merit a new denomination. While the 
 Mohawks flattened noses, gouged out eyes, and slit noses, 
 the TujMBLEES turned females upon their heads, and the 
 Dancing Masters kept each unfortunate in motion by 
 pricking his legs with their swords. Space does not allow 
 further mention of the flagrant deeds of the Heelfires, 
 or the less atrocities of the Niceiees, about the year 1720. 
 The brutality and blasphemy of these societies were sys- 
 tematic. Their oaths, dictated by the fashion of that mad 
 time, abounded with blasphemies in ridicule of the Trinity. 
 Should it be deemed that Swift and Shenstone, who moved 
 at night with great circumspection, were timid, though the 
 latter says, the pickpockets, armed with couteaus, attacked 
 whole parties at once in the Piazza, Covent Garden, let 
 Dr. Johnson speak how matters stood in 1735 : — 
 
 " Prepare for death if here at night you roam. 
 And sign your will before you sup from home. 
 Some fiery fop with new commission vain, 
 Who sleeps on brambles till he kills his man — 
 Some frolic drunkard reeling from a feast, 
 Provokes a broil, and stabs you for a jest. 
 Yet even these heroes mischievously gay, 
 Lords of the streets and terrors of the way, 
 
STAGE COACH TRAVELLING. 497 
 
 Flushed as they are with folly, youth, and wine, 
 Their prudent insults to the poor confine ; 
 Afar they mark the flambeaux bright approach. 
 And shun the shining train and gilded coach." 
 
 Mr. Nuthallj the friend and solicitor of Lord Chatham, 
 returning from Bath to London in 1775, was stopped and 
 fired at near Hounslow, so that he died of the fright.* 
 
 When the short peace of Amiens was signed in London 
 Lord Sidmouth, then Mr. Addington, sent an immediate 
 account of the news to his brother-in-law, Capt. Sutton, of 
 New Park, near Devizes. The bells rang the whole of the 
 next day. A waggoner who drove his team from that 
 market to Salisbury told the news in the evening. It was 
 not credited till a London coach arrived with particulars 
 the next day at noon.* 
 
 Though the bells rang at Bridgwater upon the news arriv- 
 ing that Cromwell was made Protector nineteen days after 
 the event — so slow was the spread of news, — still some 
 would fain argue that communications were quite rapid 
 enough for all purposes. 
 
 The Taunton stage took four days to reach London. 
 Many finding this convenience prepared for them ceased to 
 keep horses, which set going the croakers, who prophesied 
 great evils from the setting up of stage coaches. They said 
 no good hackneys would be bred, and that the agricultural 
 interest would suffer. 
 
 When the passengers arrived at night at an inn they 
 clubbed together for a dish or two of meat, and spent not 
 above 12d. or IGd. at a place. 
 
 Acquaintances were made and antipathies created for life 
 between people who sat together for six live-long days in suc- 
 cession, and who took many meals in company. Journeys 
 were unequal in expense. Some gallant, generous fellow- 
 travellers treated the ladies, which some could well affbrd to 
 
 * See the New Monthly, Oct. 1855, an article by A. Andrews, 
 f J. Waylen, Private Communication. 
 K K 
 
498 SOCIAL HISTOEY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 do ; others, less rich, found this a burden. Occasionally 
 male travellers were too prompt in proposing such liberality 
 when their own relatives were those to be treated. In a 
 word, a journey to London from Devon and Dorset was a 
 memorable event never to be eiFaced from memory, — a 
 serious undertaking, not to be too hastily compared with a 
 journey to London or to Edinburgh in the present day, 
 which may be looked upon as a mere act of locomotion, 
 however splendidly performed. 
 
 Sir Richard Steele, — a very affectionate husband cer- 
 tainly, — in the course of his journey to Edinburgh about 
 1717, sent as many as a dozen letters to his loving wife. 
 
 "When perusing a little work* detailing a journey to 
 London, in 1771, but more particularly the feelings of the 
 traveller, one is struck at the regret expressed at starting 
 that the journey was not on horseback with its peculiar ad- 
 vantages. The writer rails at the arbitrary bashaw, the 
 ferryman whose services were required for an hour. Some 
 sentiment upon morning, a lark, and nature, is interrupted by 
 the contemplation of the highwayman, Hasslet, hanging on 
 a gibbet for robbing the postman carrying the mail in 1770. 
 A detailed description, very off-handed indeed, follows of the 
 six insides, four ladies, a gentleman of the sword, and the 
 writer, a dissenting minister. The latter discuss and allow 
 their tempers to be greatly ruffled by the question of a 
 standing army. The ladies blame the officer for having 
 allowed himself and another to be compelled to quietly sur- 
 render their purses to a highwayman between Highgate and 
 London a few months before. The gallant son of Mars laid 
 it down that no honour was to be earned in contending with 
 a footpad or highwayman. The belligerent male insides 
 come to an agreement not to quarrel about their respective 
 lines of life, and peace is proclaimed for the rest of the 
 journey. Upon arriving at a town in the evening the tra- 
 vellers sometimes went to the play, though they had to start 
 again at two in the morning. The swearing a person upon 
 
 * The Travels of the Imagination, &c., by the Rev. James Murray. 
 
THE FIRST POST-CHAISE. 499 
 
 his first visit to London upon the horns at Highgate is duly 
 detailed. 
 
 A squire from the neighbourhood of Glastonbury, jour- 
 neying to Sarum in his carriage, about 1780, took care that 
 his footman was provided with a good axe to lop off any 
 branches of trees that might obstruct the progress of the 
 vehicle. 
 
 Frost was looked forward to in parts not distant from 
 London as the only cause that could make lanes passable. 
 Timber had been felled, but it was known to be impossible 
 to convey it to neighbouring towns till the muddy lanes were 
 frozen hard. 
 
 If we have from lapse of time become incredulous to the 
 difficulties, impediments, or complete bar to progress caused 
 by founderous, bottomless roads, the recent horrors of the 
 operations in the Crimea, caused by six miles of impassable 
 roads, wUl painfuUy renew our acquaintance with the old in- 
 conveniences experienced. Three thousand miles of sea 
 presented no obstacles : six miles of land, with a bad road, 
 proved insurmountable, and produced great horrors ! 
 
 Trusty servants were sent on journeys with their mistress 
 or daughter riding behind on a pillion upon horses trained to 
 carry double. Upping-stocks were then indispensable to 
 country houses. The jingling of bells worn by horses in 
 teams warned travellers how they entered some narrow 
 lanes, where two vehicles could not pass abreast. These are 
 now rarely used. Some are occasionally met with near 
 Honiton from Broadhembury, &c., and are pleasing and in- 
 spiriting sounds to the ears of a Devonian. Travellers upon 
 meeting at cross roads stopped and asked the news. 
 
 The first post-chaise that was introduced into Taunton, 
 about the year 1767, ran from the " Sugar Loaf" inn, kept 
 by Wm. Cann, now a humble public-house at the eastern 
 entrance of Cann's field, near the Bishop's Hull road. The 
 driver, Thomas Phippen, died in 1835, at the age of 104. 
 
 From London to Exeter 12?. a ton was charged for the 
 transmission of goods, fifteen times what is demanded by 
 railway companies. Pack-horses were no longer required 
 
 K K 2 
 
500 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOTJTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 the breed is now extinct. They were attended by a class of 
 men who seem to have borne much resemblance to the 
 Spanish muleteers.* The goods were carried upon dorsers : 
 panniers were breadbaskets. Some of these men adopted the 
 new plan of transmission of goods by wagon on the new 
 turnpike roads, and were called carriers. 
 
 Some teams of the carriers were composed of thirteen 
 horses. An act restricted these to nine. This was evaded 
 by paying an annual sum to the informers. It was im- 
 possible, an informer said, to travel the roads without a breach 
 of the law. 
 
 In 1745, the Wiltshire people looked upon the proposed 
 government bill for the improvement of the roads as likely 
 to enhance the already ruinous price for the carriage of 
 goods. 
 
 Turnpikes were erected so early as the year 1267. There 
 were such between St. Giles-in-the-Fields and Temple Bar, 
 in the reign of Edward IILf An act passed 1. Mary for the 
 making, repairing, and amending of the common highway 
 and causie in the counties of Dorset and Somerset, between 
 the towns of Shaftesbury and Sherborne. J 
 
 I visited, may I say, the last of this class, Judith Long, 
 in 1849, who was about one hundred years old. Her father 
 kept pack-horses, and had become a carrier after the general 
 construction of turnpike roads, and this old person accom- 
 panied him, when young, on his journeys. Being introduced 
 to the aged woman, lying in bed, as one desirous of learning 
 about the pack-horses, she looked up and seeing my straw 
 hat, it being hot weather, took me for a carrier, at least one 
 about to enter upon that line of life. She kindly promised 
 to tell me all I wanted to know ; begged me to take the 
 road by Honiton if I wished to spare the cattle, but, for 
 shortness, to go by Newton Poppleford. She warmly re- 
 commended, as a house where I should find good treatment, 
 "The Rolling Pin, Chopping Knife," Exeter. What a 
 
 * See Maeaulay. f Waylen's Hist, of Marlborough. 
 
 X Notes and Queries, May, 1855. 
 
PACK HOKSES. TURNPIKE EOADS. 501 
 
 change had one hundred years effected in the place from 
 which this good old soul thought I was to take my depar- 
 ture, and that once western metropolitan city, my destina- 
 nation. I ventured to sound her views as to her observa- 
 tions in her earliest journeys and the state of the town and 
 people at that time as compared with now a-days. There I 
 lost my character for any information I might possess or 
 likelihood to get on in my new calling. The old woman 
 opened her eyes, looked upon me with utter astonishment 
 mingled with pity, and exclaimed, " Lord bless ye, 'tis now a 
 vagabond place." What is a railway world without pack- 
 horses? Judith Long died in 1852. She was an admirer 
 of the past. 
 
 Persons upon their safe return from London were apt to 
 assume ridiculous airs and superiority over their fellows who 
 had not drunk in political chit-chat like themselves in the 
 city coffee-houses. Inns by the road side were amusing 
 places of resort, for the residents of country towns, and even 
 the clergyman of the parish. The travellers who arrived 
 dispensed the latest news to a craving company, who had no 
 other means of learning what then agitated the great Babel, 
 and other parts of the kingdom. Many a " little great man " 
 was taught how to conduct himself, among the strangers at 
 a tavern, who now a-days only remains in his family, or re- 
 turns a visit in private company, and so passes year after year 
 without those salutary checks and sarcasm which overbearing 
 manners, purse-pride, and folly require for their correction. 
 The bounds of temperance were too often passed, owing to 
 frequenting in public company the coffee-houses^from which 
 the clubs have grown — and taverns ; still other moral good 
 effects were derived from them, if we cannot go the length 
 to style them " the academy of civility and free-school of in- 
 genuity." The excitement for news and readiness to ring 
 bells for joy, or take hasty measures in another way upon 
 hearing some idle report from travellers, forcibly recalls to 
 mind the account CfBsar gives in his Commentaries of the 
 volatile Gauls. These compelled travellers to stop and tell 
 them what they had heard or known in the way of news, 
 
 K K 3 
 
502 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COrNTIES. 
 
 and, as no doubt often occurred in our south of England, 
 the news furnished by parties so arrested on their journey 
 was in strict consonance with the known feelings and wishes 
 of the inquirers. 
 
 When at festive meetings, the heart opened and the tongue 
 would talk, no subject was so ready as the perils of the road. 
 One spoke of his escape from this or that highwayman, of 
 having to wait, and then, at great peril, having crossed some 
 dangerous water. 
 
 The two clothiers deputed by their brothers in that trade, 
 in Dorset, to consider the cause of the decline of their trade 
 in 1622, after labouring in what was a kind of clothier's 
 parliament during two months were robbed on their journey 
 home. 
 
 Humble tradesmen walked to London and back, having 
 first made their wlU, but reaUy they depended much upon 
 casual lifts, and the road wagon carried a motley group 
 who nestled aloft upon the top of the luggage. The journey 
 averaged a week each way. 
 
 As an incident of distant communication between places, 
 let me adduce an anecdote of a resident of Edinburgh, who 
 sent two daughters to a boarding-school in London where 
 the holidays were of a month's duration. Upon their arrival 
 in Scotland, if the voyage had been longer than usual, it was 
 time for the young ladies in two or three days to return 
 again ; so their vacation was occasionally literally passed at 
 sea. 
 
 The lanes were in some parts in such a state that, as at 
 Lyme and the country round for mUes, one hundred years 
 ago, no vehicle of any kind was kept. Pack-horses did all 
 the carrying that was required. A carriage was a curiosity 
 which was rarely seen. The construction of turnpike roads, 
 under a general Turnpike Act, in 1755, was an important 
 event in the history of the kingdom. Many, however, 
 viewed this as an unjustifiable cutting up of the country, 
 and even quoted Jeremiah vi. 16. The old conservative 
 coachman, the Marlborough one, would not use the new 
 tm-npike road, but stuck to the old waggon track. His 
 
COST OF TRAVELLING TO YOEK BY MAIL. 503 
 
 grandfather had driven in the slush before him, and he 
 would stick to it till death. 
 
 The Blandford waggoner said, " Roads had but one object 
 — for waggon driving. He required but five foot width in a 
 lane, and aU the rest might go to the devil." He said " The 
 
 gentry ought to stay at home and be d d, and not run 
 
 gossiping up and down the country."* 
 
 Journeys of great length performed in Inclement weather 
 upon the roof of a coach were frequently the cause of trying 
 fits of illness and of death. And this in spite of great-coats 
 made of double-milled cloth with ponderous capes of the 
 same material. The protection aftbrded by closed railway 
 carriages has so reduced the call for this thick cloth that it 
 is no longer made in some western cloth factories. Every 
 one used to have a great-coat, properly so called : now all 
 have ower-coats, few possess the former, because no journeys 
 of twenty hours have to be encountered, and a cold summer 
 morning or a bitter winter wind and rain to be defied. 
 
 The cost of an outside place on the mail and the kind of 
 protection required are set forth in verse. 
 
 " When to York per mail you start, 
 Four-caped like other men ; 
 To the book-keeper, so smart, 
 You pay down three pounds in part ; 
 Two pounds ten before you start ; 
 Sum total, five pound ten." 
 
 The traveller on his way to Ireland before the introduc- 
 tion of steam took ship, and might be several days on the 
 water, when there was no steward ready to supply all ordinary 
 wants. This traveller had probably arrived at the sea-port 
 after a long journey, and the precise time for sailing depended 
 upon wind and weather. Hence the necessity for being 
 supplied with a basket of provisions for the voyage. This 
 was a source of considerable profit to the landlords of the 
 inns of sea ports. The charges were exorbitant. The bottle 
 
 -* Doran's Account, Gentleman's Mag. 1852. 
 K K 4 
 
50-1 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE 80UTHEKN COUNTIES. 
 
 of brandy — an invariable accompaniment of each basket — 
 was charged one guinea. 
 
 A diary is preserved of a journey to Dublin from Gros- 
 venor Square, 12th June, 1787, in a coach-and-four, accom- 
 panied by a post-chaise and pair, and five outriders. The 
 party reached Holyhead in four days at a cost of 151. lis. 2>d. 
 The state of the intercourse between this country and the 
 sister island at this part of the account is strikingly set 
 forth in the following entries : —Ferry at Bangor, \l. 10s. ; 
 expenses of the yacht hired to carry the party across the 
 channel, 28/. 7s. 9rf. ; duty on the coach, 71. 13s. 46?. ; boats 
 on shore, 1/. Is. — total, 114?. 3s. 4:d. 
 
 Visitors to the metrojiolis had much to say about the lions 
 and their keepers, the beefeaters of the Tower. This was the 
 London sight most famed. To show a country person the 
 lions, or to lionise, has become a common form of expression. 
 
 At length came the four-horse mails to Bristol in 1784, 
 and the " Quicksilver mail," to be in turn superseded by the 
 railway locomotive. Some see no occasion for any railways, 
 upon which the Exeter people travel or fly to London in six 
 hours, instead of being so many days and nights. 
 
 What can ever compare with the well-appointed mail- 
 coaches, the " Quicksilver mail," &c. in outward display ? 
 Their speed was thought to be surprising. Was there in 
 the world a prettier sight than the summer procession of the 
 mail-coaches in London — such horses, such neatness? 
 
 At mall-speed, if anything untoward happened, an acci- 
 dent occurred, as on the rail; but not to so many 
 individuals, though dangerous to the passengers, and gene- 
 rally fatal to some. A coachman, instituting a comparison 
 between the two modes of travelling, thus summed up : 
 " I know that if anything goes wrong, there you are^' making 
 a sign of upsetting ; " but by the rail, if you meet with an 
 accident, where are you ? " 
 
 The communication along our coasts with London by 
 signals from stations upon the hills, where signal-posts were 
 erected, and the acceleration of travelling, owing to the 
 
 * Illustrated London Kews, Jan. 16. 1856. 
 
ARGUMENT AGAINST CANALS AND RAILWAYS. 505 
 
 improved construction of the roads upon the plan of 
 Mr. M'Adam, appeared to leave all further improvements 
 as hopeless. The railway and the electric telegraph have 
 shown how incorrect this view was. 
 
 The increased facilities for travelling produced effects that 
 were by many much dreaded. The ruin of market towns 
 was predicted from the number of petty shopkeepers who 
 were found to be living in country villages, assisted by 
 persons who had never served any regular apprentice- 
 ship, and worst of all, in defiance of all propriety, actually 
 carrying on a flourishing trade. 
 
 Hackney-coaches were decried in 1638 as breaking up 
 the streets, and making the price of hay very great. 
 
 An argument used against a canal to Bath from London, 
 in the reign of William III., will elucidate the views of the 
 enemies of the free intercourse of goods as well as men. 
 
 The opponents argued, that by lessening the number of 
 land carriers the consumption caused by their numerous 
 cattle would be diminished; the arrival of grain from 
 Bath would lower the prices in Wiltshire, and occasion a 
 fall in rents ; for corn brought by water to Bristol, and 
 thence conveyed on horseback, did at some seasons of the 
 year, glut the markets as far as Warminster, Devizes, and 
 other places in Wiltshire.* 
 
 The landowners of Sussex and neighbouring counties 
 complained against the making of roads, and petitioned 
 against them. They said the roads would interfere with 
 their supplying thefmetropolis, as they had exclusively done. 
 
 Among other complaints against railways at their first 
 introduction, as being unnecessary, I remember to have 
 heard a party demonstrating the causes which had given 
 rise to them. He said the gentry could not set up shops, 
 and still wanted to improve their income ; so they devised 
 railways, in which they could invest money and engage in 
 business, really so, without appearing to do so. They were, 
 in short, the parties who cut up the country, for what we 
 could all dispense with ! 
 
 * Wayleii's Marlborough. 
 
506 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 The Post, and the cost of Messengers to carry letters before it 
 was established — Newspapers. 
 
 " Haste, post haste ! Haste with all diligence. For thy life, for thy 
 life ! " * 
 
 Sucli was the exciting language used upon official letters 
 in the reign of Henry VIII. to stimulate the sluggard to 
 dispatch. However we may be astonished at the rapidity 
 of modern travelling and communication, we have nothing 
 now-a-days so startling. 
 
 The word " Post " is possessed of such magical interest 
 that no apology is required for any elucidation of the 
 subject. 
 
 It is necessary to distinguish between the early accounts 
 of a " Post " and " Post Office." These have been too 
 often confounded. 
 
 There was a Post in the reign of Edward IV. During 
 the Scotch war, the plan was introduced of placing swift 
 couriers at every twentieth mile ; so that by their passing 
 letters from hand to hand the king could obtain the news 
 from a distance of two hundred miles within two days. We 
 shall have to speak of two sorts of Post f at the beginning 
 of the seventeenth century, all of which preceded the 
 establishment of a Post Office, in 1635. 
 
 It is interesting to trace the steps by which great public 
 benefits have been introduced. "We purpose to do this 
 with respect to the Post in Dorsetshire. From the archives 
 of Lyme many curious foreshadowings of the Post have been 
 extracted. 
 
 In 1558, the man who brought round the Council's letters 
 to have the peace proclaimed, and that ships should not depart 
 without license, received 2s. Gd., is styled " The Post.'' 
 Half-a-crown was the sum paid to a poursuivant who brought 
 a proclamation. 
 
 * Tytler's Edward VI., &c. 
 
 t Chron. Croy., Halsted's Life of Kichard HI. 
 
HORSE AND FOOT POST MAN. 507 
 
 Upon the great alarm caused by the reported coming 
 of the Spanish Armada, Sir John Norris was sent into 
 Dorsetshire by the queen's government. 
 
 There was an order at this time to the following 
 effect: — * 
 
 Item, that there be a foote post appointed in every parish within 
 the shire whose dweUing should be chosen near the church, 
 and a horse post in every town." 
 
 I find in the Lyme Accompt Book : — 
 
 Item, the 11th June, 1588, paid the foote post for one month's 
 
 wages from 14th May, at 6d. per week, 2s. 
 9th July, John Gosse the younger, from 14th May to 9th July, 
 
 for a post horse [z. e. Is. Ad. per week], 10*. %d.\ 
 
 We are not to understand that this foot post man and 
 horse post man had carried letters as the postmen of the pre- 
 sent day do ; but that they had hired themselves at a salary 
 to be always ready to do so upon an emergency. If services 
 were required and duly performed, these were paid for in 
 addition to salary ; thus — 
 
 1st Sept. John Gosse, from 9th July to 1st Sept., for his post 
 [was paid], 10*. Sd. J 
 
 When this horse post man had to mount, he was paid both 
 for himself and horse. 
 
 Item, paid for a post horse and a man to Weymouth for a gent of 
 my lord admiral's, 10*. Sd. 
 
 * Harleiau MS., Brit. Mus. 3324. 
 
 •f "At Leicester, in 1570, it was agreed at a Comraon Hall that six post 
 horses be kept, and that 33*. id. be allowed for each. The next year 
 the twenty-four principal men paid 2«. each, and the forty-eight Is. each ; 
 the residue to be gathered of the commons for the keeping six post 
 horses at 26«. Sd. per horse. Four horses only to be kept to serve at an 
 hour's warning." ^ — Nichoh'.t Hist, of Leicester. 
 
 X See Pulman's Book of the Axe. " The foot post for travelling this 
 year, 1/. .1.?. 10^. 
 
508 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 From the history of Norwich we may learn the interest 
 corporations began to take in a post, or in establishing means 
 for postal communication, so early as the year 1568, It 
 may be interesting also to observe, how one class of persons 
 was sentenced by authority to bear half the burden of that 
 which was proved to be a public good, and a benefit to all 
 her Majesty's loving subjects. 
 
 1568. Three postmasters had 3Z. 13s. Ad. lent them free 
 of interest, and 4/. each, a stipend paid by the sheriffs, the 
 half of which was levied on the innkeepers and tipplers, and 
 gathered by the constables of every ward. No man was to 
 take up post-horses in the city unless he was licensed by 
 warrant from the Queen's majesty, the Duke of Norfolk, the 
 Privy Council, or the mayor ; nor to use any horse above 
 twelve or fourteen miles together, for which he was to pay 
 2d. the mile, and Qd. to his guide, to go and carry back the 
 horse, and the said horses were not to carry any cloakbag of 
 above ten pounds weight. 
 
 Hackney-horses were settled at 12c?. the first day, and 8(f. 
 the day after, till re-delivery.* 
 
 Merchants could not have afforded to send a special mes- 
 senger with every letter. They must have made use of 
 opportunities to forward business correspondence, — incon- 
 siderable as it was compared with that of the present day. 
 They were directed by a proclamation, issued in the year 
 1591, not to use " disavowed persons " to convey their let- 
 ters. The Government of James I. considered the practice 
 to be dangerous ! 
 
 The commencement of the regular carriage of the people's 
 letters is enveloped in obscurity. The germ of the present 
 system can be traced to the reign of Charles I. 
 
 There was a " Master of the King's Posts," and an office 
 held by the same individual, the " Master of the King's 
 Outward Posts." 
 
 The royal posts were used for the transmission of private 
 letters. This practice is supposed to have originated in an 
 
 * Blomefield's Norfolk. 
 
EOTAL POSTS. — THOMAS WITHEEINGS. 509 
 
 act of grace, and to have prevailed to a very considerable ex- 
 tent, so as to attain almost the position of a right upon a 
 certain payment being made. The expenses of the post- 
 master being regularly paid as a part of the royal establish- 
 ment, and the conveyance of other letters being optional, it 
 is difficult to believe that no advantage could have accrued 
 to that personage by the facilities he aiforded the mercantile 
 community. Such, however, is said to have been the case 
 so late as the year 1635. 
 
 This has been accounted for as follows : perhaps the old 
 payments, having been fixed at an earlier period, had not 
 been adapted to the increasing prices of the times, and the 
 scale of payments for conveying letters, &c., was not well 
 adjusted ; or the deputies had taken too good care of them- 
 selves. It could not have been intended to mean that the 
 transmission of letters of private individuals was not paid for 
 by them. The necessity for the transmission of a letter often 
 existed ; and a special messenger would have been required 
 to be sent, perhaps to a great distance, at a heavy cost. 
 
 About the year 1635, the office of the Master of the King's 
 Posts had come by descent from the patentee of James I., 
 Lord Stanhope of Harrington, the King's Vice-Chamberlain, 
 to Thomas Witherings ; and he had also succeeded in ob- 
 taining the mastership of the " Outward Posts," i. e. for 
 abroad. 
 
 In a country which honours men of practical genius, why 
 has this individual been so little known to fame ? The plans 
 of Thomas Witherings were intended to place the postal 
 communications upon something like the present footing, 
 having — I. Fixed rates of postage. II. Horse posts, vke 
 foot posts. III. And permission for the public generally to 
 use the establishment. The posts cost the state 3400/. a 
 year, instead of serving every one and producing a revenue 
 besides.* 
 
 In the reign of James I., there were four lines of posts 
 
 * See the subsequent history of the Post Office, traced in the Report 
 of the Secret Committee on the Post Office, 1844, and in the appendix 
 of documents supplied by the Public Record and State Paper Office. 
 
510 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 throughout the kingdom; viz., from London, I. To Ply- 
 mouth. II. To Berwick. III. To Holyhead. IV. To 
 Dover. 
 
 From the proceedings carried on in the Court of Requests, 
 which exercised so considerable and equitable a jurisdiction 
 in the 16th and part of the 17th century — 9. Charles I., 
 A. D. 1633, much of the preceding and subsequent informa- 
 tion has been derived. All was connected with the squabble 
 between the deputy postmaster, Thomas Parkes, and the 
 packet posts, or postmasters on the western line of road.* 
 
 A warrant under the Royal Privy Seal, dated 21st March, 
 8. James I., has this order, which the western people would 
 think very prejudicial to them : — The stages of posts from 
 London to Plymouth are not necessary, but only in time of 
 war; and being then usually maintained, are to be dis- 
 charged. 
 
 This opinion being found to be erroneous, ten years after, 
 another warrant held that " the requirements of the district 
 necessitated the re-establishment of the said stages, for the 
 necessary despatch of letters and packets." The Lords of 
 the Treasury were directed to pay to Lord Stanhope, as 
 Master of the Posts, the rates as set forth, viz., 23*. for the 
 entire journey from London to Plymouth. 
 
 In the early part of the year 1629, Feb. 24th, there 
 were the following Packet Posts, or Post Masters, who sent 
 on Packets between London and Plymouth, viz. : — 
 
 Roger Pymble, - Packet Post at Charing Cross. 
 
 James Wilkinson, „ Staines. 
 
 Henry Davis „ Hartford Bridge. 
 
 Anthony Spittle „ Basingstoke. 
 
 John Tarrant „ Andover. 
 
 Eichard Myles, „ Salisbury. 
 
 Nicholas Compton, „ Shaftesbury. 
 
 * John Bruce, Esq., P.A.S., brought these particulars to light and 
 gave them to the world in the Gentleman's Magazine, July, 1853, 
 p. 59., having previously illustrated the subject in Notes and Queries. 
 The merit is wholly due to that gentleman, whose matter has been occa- 
 sionally, but slightly, altered. My thanks are here offered to him. 
 
LIABILITIES OF POSTMASTERS. 511 
 
 John Smith, - Packet Post at Sherborne. 
 
 Thomas Huchins, 
 Kobert Searle 
 Thomas Newman, 
 Thomas Cruse, 
 Abraham Jennings, 
 
 Crewkerne. 
 
 Honiton. 
 
 Exeter. 
 
 Ashburton. 
 
 Plymouth. 
 
 These postmasters were bound, 8th March, 6. Charles I., 
 in 50?, each for the faithful performance of their engage- 
 ments — a faithful and speedy conveyance of all letters 
 that should be brought to them. Their horses were di- 
 rected to be "able and sufficient, and well furnished of 
 saddles, bridles, girts and stirropes, with good guides to 
 looke to them ; who for their said horses shall demand and 
 receive of such as shall ride on them, the prices accus- 
 tomed." The postmaster was also to have ready "two 
 bags of leather, at the least, well lined with bayes or cot- 
 ton, to carry the packet in." He was also to have ready 
 " homes to sound and blow so oft as the post meets com- 
 pany, or four times in every mile." 
 
 The " Posts " according to the phraseology of the day 
 were of two distiact kinds : — * 
 
 I. The " Thorough Post ; " when special messengers, or 
 couriers themselves rode through the whole distance " with 
 horn and guide." They were charged in 1603, 2id. a mile 
 (raised in 1609 to three pence) for the hire of each horse, 
 besides the "guide's groats." The hire was to be paid 
 beforehand. 
 
 II. The " Post for the Packet " was the second kind of 
 post. Every postmaster was bound to keep horses ready ; 
 and on receipt of a " packet," or parcel containing letters, 
 he was to send it on towards the next stage, within a 
 quarter of an hour after its arrival, entering the transaction 
 in " a large and fair ledger paper book." 
 
 The "Post for the Packet" was at first used for the 
 
 * See Notes and Queries, Jan. 1. 1853, for an able article from John 
 Bruce, Esq., who refers to the collection of Proclamations belonging to 
 the Royal Society of Antiquaries. 
 
512 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 carriage of despatches for the Government, or for ambas- 
 sadors ; but a similar mode of conveyance soon began to be 
 taken advantage of by corporations, merchants, and j^rivate 
 persons. 
 
 In 1621 the corporation of Lyme paid 5s. per week for 
 the postage of letters to London : — 
 
 Item, paid for sending letters weekly unto London, 5s. 
 
 This was the last postal arrangement up to the establish- 
 ment of the first post, or Running Post, between London, 
 through Dorsetshire, Exeter, and Plymouth, in 1635. 
 
 A person named Samuel Jude, perhaps considering that 
 there was a good opening for him on the western line of 
 road, and encouraged by many who thought he would per- 
 haps serve them better than the regular postmasters, set 
 up as Travelling Post. The former petitioned the Lords of 
 the Council against Jude, for appropriating to himself the 
 sole carriage of all the merchants' letters and dispatches 
 between London and Plymouth, altogether excluding his 
 Majesty's posts and likewise the carriage of packets on 
 horseback in the nature of a post. 
 
 These packet posts, or postmasters, set forth in an an- 
 swer occasioned by their squabble that the Lords of the 
 Council, upon consideration, found the proceedings of Jude 
 to be very prejudicial to his Majesty's service, in disabling 
 and discouraging of his Majesty's posts, by excluding them 
 from the said employment ; and thereupon ordered that his 
 Majesty's packet posts should carry the letters and dis- 
 patches of all such merchants and others as should employ 
 them, between London and Plymouth, without Jude's pull- 
 ing down their bills in either place, or giving them any 
 interruption in the said service. The Lord Mayor of 
 London, and magistrates of Salisbury, Exeter, and Ply- 
 mouth, and all other his Majesty's subjects, were required 
 to govern themselves accordingly. 
 
 At the first arranging about the posts, the merchants of 
 the two extreme points of the line interfered, and procured 
 
POSTMASTERS TO FIND SECURITY. 513 
 
 from Mr. Secretary Cocke that security should be taken 
 from the postmasters. 
 
 Thomas Parkes, the deputy postmaster, on the 8th of 
 March, 6 Charles I., entered into an agreement with the 
 factors of London and Plymouth for stages between these 
 two places, viz. ; that the said deputy postmaster should 
 provide every one who came to him with letters with a 
 horse and furniture to the next stage at the rate of 2^d. 
 per mile, and 4c?. to the guide, called the guide's groat, for 
 returning with the horse. 
 
 Thomas Parkes asserts that Roger Pymble, the post- 
 master for the packet at Charing Cross, one of the prin- 
 cipal parties to the said agreement, agreed with him that 
 he would send a guide horse for the service in question 
 every Tuesday, for which Pymble was to receive 40Z. a 
 year. Parkes was to get nothing for this, and yet Pymble 
 often neglected to send the guide horse weekly. Parkes 
 had given a bond for 1001. to Robert Barker, of Plymouth, 
 for the due performance of his duties, which he asserts he 
 had carefully observed ; and now Pymble, having taken 
 offence at complainant, had combined with Barker to sue 
 complainant on his bond for alleged neglect of duty. Parkes 
 further adds, that he is injured to the amount of 40/. a 
 year by the disorderly ridings of Pymble's servants. 
 
 Process was speedily issued and an answer was made 
 29th January 9 Charles I., by Roger Pymble, Robert Bar- 
 ker, and John Northcott. 
 
 Pymble denies many of Parkes's statements, and asserts 
 that Parkes had for nearly two years utterly refused and 
 neglected to perform these orders and articles agreed upon ; 
 and had taken the whole pay for carrying expresses, and 
 had not been accountable for the same. This neglect had 
 damnified the passengers in frustrating their journey and 
 affairs, and prejudiced the postmasters, so that the penalty 
 would not satisfy them. 
 
 Pymble makes this statement, which we can now verify, 
 that " The business, i. e. the post, is generally taken, and 
 
 L L 
 
514 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 known to be most useful, and a public good and benefit to 
 Ms Majesty's loving subjects. 
 
 In a general denial of Parkes's statements, it is alleged 
 that he had (with a corrupt practice too much in keeping 
 with the time) much abused and wronged the country iu 
 locking up the postmaster's horses, and keeping them a day 
 or night, and re-leasing them again for money, and not using 
 them in any service at all, and abusing the passengers more 
 than beseemeth. 
 
 It wiU have been perceived by this quarrel, that good 
 plans or schemes for national benefit cannot be fully carried 
 out while general corruption exists, as in Russia now, and 
 in England two centuries ago. Great improvements re- 
 quire time for their development and full growth. 
 
 Strange that a penny-post should have been suggested so 
 early as the year 1656 ; and that too by a reformer named 
 Hill. His publication is entitled, " A Penny-Post; or a 
 Vindication of the Liberty and Birthright of every English- 
 man in carrying Merchants' or other Men's Letters against 
 any restraint of" farmers of such employments. By John 
 HiU."* 
 
 In 1679, the projectors for conveying letters to any part 
 of the city or suburbs of London for a penny a letter, opened 
 their offices at which they hung out tables to advertise 
 people of the thing. The porters, not without good reason 
 supposing there would be a great diminution of their em- 
 ployment, took down and tore the tables wherever they met 
 with them. 
 
 Dr. Titas Gates said the letter carrying was a project of 
 the Papists. This penny-post was postponed for twenty 
 years. 
 
 The blessing of constant intercourse by letter was not en- 
 joyed to any great extent when few could write, and every 
 letter had to be paid for in respect of its being " made " 
 and " written " before it could be dispatched. Hence the 
 importance of a postal communication was not fully ap- 
 preciated. 
 
 * Illustrated London News. 
 
BEIBEKY OF POSTBOYS. 515 
 
 The postboy, Robert Drew, employed by the post-master 
 at Dorchester to convey letters to Weymouth in 1725, 
 sometimes did not find it convenient to go that journey of 
 seven miles till the next day, Friday, and then he did not 
 blow his horn as was prescribed. Occasionally, when his 
 convenience was interfered with, the postboy sent on the 
 letters by some one going to Weymouth. A townsman, 
 Thomas Pomeroy, having remonstrated with him for these 
 things was violently thrust against his own house, and bruised 
 by the public official ; who challenged him to fight as a 
 troublesome complainant, who, if he had gone on, might have 
 eventually come out as a postal reformer, anticipating more 
 recent ones who have only had to contend with underlings 
 through the medium of pen and ink.* 
 
 So late as about the middle of last century, the London 
 letters were forwarded from Lyme to Axminster upon a 
 mule so remarkably obstinate that the beast that bore " news 
 from all nations " was urged on with great difficulty. The 
 animal daily struggled to continue in Broad Street where 
 the post office was then situated. Now is the time to 
 chronicle such things. Some years hence they may not be 
 comprehended and surely would not be believed. 
 
 Little is known about this early post. Besides the delay 
 caused by bad roads, often perhaps falsely cited by postboys 
 as an excuse, the bribery successfully practised towards 
 the postboys is proved from sundry entries in the mayoralty 
 of Robert Coade, 1669-70. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Nov. 9. To money pd. the postboy for staying for letters - 6 
 Dec. 8. „ „ „ - 6 
 
 July 2. To money paid for letters to Capt. Alford, wherein 
 was inclosed a certificate signed by Mr. Floyer 
 and Mr. Ivy concerning the yearly disburse- 
 ment of the Cobb and sea works, and gave the 
 post for the lent of his hoese to ride att Char- 
 mouth, and for staying till the letters were 
 WRITTEN - - - 10 
 
 * Archives of Weymouth. 
 LL 2 
 
516 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 The magistrate, Mr. Floyer, lived at Berne, a mile beyond 
 Charmouth, so the delay must have been considerable. 
 
 The lent of the horse furnishes another instance of the 
 abuse of a useful institution at a period of corruption. 
 
 Let us now turn to the expense and inconvenience of 
 sending letters before there was a post. 
 
 Does not the following entry of the year 1549 suggest 
 much to every reflecting mind ? Can we refrain from con- 
 trasting our advantages of cheap communication with the 
 costly intercourse of really remote London in Tudor reigns? 
 
 Lyme, 1549. 
 Item, delivered unto WiUiam Dene to ryd to London, 26s. 8rf. 
 
 A letter at the cost of one penny put into the post-office 
 at four in the afternoon is delivered in London at nine the 
 following morning. No fear is expressed of highwaymen, 
 loss of the letter and the life of its bearer. An answer comes, 
 perhaps, at an interval of a few hours. The business is 
 transacted, perhaps, in the most complete manner, but the 
 attendant excitement of ancient days is no more. 
 
 Just consider another entry : — 
 
 1551. 
 Bread and ale in the Hall when John Stowell came from Lon- 
 don, 2d. 
 
 Fancy the worthy mayor and his brethren hastening to 
 the Town Hall to receive the messenger and his letter. 
 This might be paralleled now-a-day. The messenger has 
 news of aU kinds to relate to the assembled worthies, who 
 can gain late intelligence from no other quarter. They 
 hang upon the mouth of the narrator, and when they at 
 length disperse, their families and the whole town have re- 
 tailed out with a thousand comments what appears to be 
 astounding intelligence. 
 
 The tenants of some manors were to carry letters when 
 required. 
 
 Some of the tenants of the manor of Castle Combe, in the 
 
COST OF CAEEYING LETTERS. 517 
 
 14tli century, were to carry letters whenever required, so 
 that they could return within the day.* 
 
 The Western rebels in the commotion time, in the reign of 
 Edward VI., had among other demands for the effecting 
 their reform one that no person who had not more than 100/. 
 a-year should keep two servant men. Cranmer answered at 
 length the curious items of that early call for a change. He 
 showed how unreasonable the demand was, as in case of one 
 servant being sent to London, the master would have no one 
 to wait upon him till the other's return. 
 
 In the year 1558 we find in the Town Accompt Book : — 
 
 s. d. 
 Horse hire to Hinton to certify Mr. Poulett of the muster 6 
 
 [The distance is about 18 miles.] 
 Town clerk riding to Mr. Gibbs the steward at South 
 
 Petherton - - - - - -20 
 
 [About 21 miles. This in the reign of Elizabeth.] 
 John Jurden, the mayor, enters in 1577. 
 Item, for WiUiam Goldsmith's charge in riding to my 
 Lord Marquis of Winchester, Lord Lieutenant of Dorset, 
 concerning Thomas Wood's servant begotten with child 6 
 [N. B. Thomas Wood's man was sent to Dorchester.] 
 
 Mr. Roger Keate, who frequently went to town on the 
 business of the Weymouth Corporation charged for money 
 
 paid to Hendy for the bringing up a letter from Mr. Mayor, virf. 
 Item, to the carriers to bring down letters at divers times, xviijrf. 
 
 s. d. 
 To Stret for the carriage of a letter to the Council - 13 4 
 
 Sending the Commissioners' letter to Poole - - 4 
 
 The bearers of letters did sometimes grievously disappoint 
 their employers, e. g, 
 
 George Bagge was paid 20s. to convey letters to London, the 
 which letters he carried to Wilton and no further, for the which 
 20s. he is to give accompt for.t 
 
 * History of Castle Combe, by J. P. Scrope, Esq., M.P. 
 t Sherren Papers. 
 
 LL 3 
 
518 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Extracts from the Archives of Lyme Regis. 
 
 1620. Paid Bottle for a letter from Lyme to Crewkerne s. d. 
 
 (14 miles) - - - 1 
 
 T. Brown for going after him with another letter 1 8 
 
 1621. G-ardener for going with a letter to Salisbury to 
 
 the registrar - - - - - 6 8 
 
 Communication by letter was so expensive that little 
 arrangements tending to lessen the charge were often had 
 recourse to by our frugal townsmen : — 
 
 Item, paid, 1622-3, unto Mr. Geare [the vicar] for carrying a 
 letter to Sir Francis Ashley, for which a messenger must else 
 have been sent of purpose, to certify the Lord Keeper the cause 
 of committing James Smith to Dorchester gaol, 20s. 
 
 s. d. 
 
 1625. To a messenger from Exeter (28 miles) that came 
 
 from the governor with a letter - - 1 
 
 To a messenger from Colyton (7 miles) with a 
 
 letter sent by Mr. Tonge - - - 6 
 
 To a messenger that brought a letter for a stay of 
 
 shipping [«. e. an embargo] - - - 6 
 
 To a messenger sent to Bridport (8 miles) for a 
 
 copy of the letter to proclaim King Charles - 8 
 
 Partridge, for carriage of a letter to Sir Richard 
 
 Strode - - - - - 1 
 
 [A relative of the Yonge family of Colyton.] 
 
 To a messenger sent hither by Mr. Yonge - 6 
 
 1630. Given to Mr. Napper's man for bringing a letter 
 from the Earl of Suffolk, the Lord Lieutenant of 
 Dorset concerning the peace with Spain * -26 
 
 Great men frequently fixed in their letters the sum which 
 the bearer of their letter or messenger was to receive. A 
 poursuivant that brought a proclamation into the west, gene- 
 rally received by consent, as it is expressed, 2s. 6d. 
 
 I can find nothing of merchants riding or sending their 
 
 * All -these from the Town Accompt Book of Lyme. 
 
POSTAL AEEANGEMENTS IN FRANCE. 519 
 
 own horses ; but I cannot venture to assert that they kept 
 none for their use or that of their messengers. 
 
 A few charges made by the letters-out of horses in West 
 Dorset are here inserted, as being of great interest and ap- 
 propriate to the subject. Horses were hired to expedite the 
 delivery of a letter. 
 
 In 1584, a horse from Lyme to London and back, kept 
 there six weeks, 288 miles, besides being rode to Wind- 
 sor occasionally (1| per mile) - - - 13 4 
 
 Hire of a horse to Windsor from London when the hired 
 
 horse from Lyme was lame - - - - 2 6 
 
 In 1619, a horse from Lyme to London and back was 
 
 charged - - - - - -100 
 
 From Lyme to Dorchester (24 miles) - - - 4 
 
 " Beaminster (14 miles) - - - 3 6 
 
 A horse by the day *- - - - -20 
 
 N.B. — ^Persons at Southampton who let out horses in 1577, were 
 not allowed to take for a journey of eight days or under, to 
 London or Bristol, above 6s. 8d., and for every day after 
 lOdf 
 
 The state of the post in France in 1816 resembled ours of 
 former years. At Valognes a carrier left twice a week for 
 Cherbourg. Officers watched the carrier's house. Nume- 
 rous persons who had letters for that worthy skulked about 
 to avoid being fined for sending letters by such a channel, 
 and so defrauding the revenue. In the end, letters were 
 smuggled in numbers. 
 
 Parties travelling by coach from the country to London 
 used to carry a number of letters for the twopenny-post box. 
 To deposit them therein was one of the first duties upon 
 arriving in the metropolis. 
 
 It is a trite observation that whatever occurs regularly 
 and without interruption ceases in course of time to excite 
 our surprise, indeed often even appears commonplace and falls 
 short of admiration. Such was the case with that surprising 
 
 * Archives of Lyme. f Archjeol. Journal, vol. iii. p. 232. 
 
520 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 engine of power the newspaper, which form small be- 
 ginnings, and producing only small effects, went on to what 
 we now know it, though aU its workings are too vast to be 
 measured. 
 
 The " Weekly Newes " published in London was the first 
 newspaper. There was a quarto pamphlet of a few leaves 
 entitled " The Diurnal Occurrences or Daily Proceedings of 
 both Houses in this great and happy Parliament, from 3rd 
 Nov. 1640, &c." 
 
 Heading of an Early Newspaper. 
 
 The writers of news-letters formed a numerous class. They 
 sent accounts of remarkable transactions. Some newspapers 
 had blank spaces for the additional matter which the pur- 
 chaser might choose to insert with his own pen. 
 
 Advertising began in earnest with the Restoration. Quack 
 doctors were the first who had recourse to this mode of 
 giving publicity to their panaceas and specifics. The first 
 advertisement in a newspaper was in 1652. It was for a 
 book in praise of Cromwell. 
 
EAELT NEWSPAPERS. 521 
 
 The '' Daily Courant " was the first marvel of its kind a 
 newspaper issued daily, which came out in the year 1702. 
 
 The provincial towns, Salisbury and Sherborne, the former 
 in 1738, had the distinguished honour of possessing a news- 
 paper establishment. Each distributed their impressions by 
 newsmen whose coming was hailed in town and country- 
 houses. Before the paper had been set up rumour only 
 brought news ; now a week elapsed, and each country family 
 was in communication with the world at large. No one need 
 wonder that when deep snow lay or floods were out, the 
 delay of the newsmen created great disappointment. In 
 some parts of Cornwall, the newsman having been seen to 
 approach, parties took that moment for going to the rich 
 man's house who had the paper read out for the benefit of 
 all. Nothing could have been a greater treat. The news- 
 mongers sat in the hall, for no other room would have held 
 them, and servants made ^ttens, i. e. excuses for coming in 
 at the time. 
 
 When Glasgow was a fortnight from London the firing of 
 a gun announced the coming in of the post. The members 
 of the Clubs who heard it tumbled out of bed and rushed 
 down to the club room, where a tankard of hot herb ale, or a 
 beverage which was a mixture of rum and sugar, was ready 
 for them before breakfast.* 
 
 Early newspapers gave a list of the couples married during 
 the week. This was not a dry announcement of names, but 
 was enlivened by much highly interesting matter. 
 
 For example, take a batch of marriages in 1730 : — 
 
 Mr. Baskett to. Miss Pell, with 5000?. 
 
 Mr. Davis to Mrs. Wylde, with 400Z. per annum. 
 
 The Lord Bishop of St. Asaph to Miss Orell, with 3O,O0OZ. 
 
 J. Whitcombe, Esq., to Miss Allen, with 40,000Z. 
 
 Mr. Will Hurfer to Miss Sally Mitchiner, with 3000?. f 
 
 Let us take at a venture " The Salisbury Journal," 
 Monday, Jan. 29. 1738-9. No. 53. If just, we must own 
 
 * Dr. Strange, t Notes and Queries : R, W. Hackwood. 
 
522 SOCIAL HISTOET OP THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 that the matrimonial annals, as now recorded, yield the palm 
 of interest to the entries of such matters in early provincial 
 papers. It is something to hear about the person of the bride, 
 her figure, and her fortune. 
 
 " Married, at St. George's, Hanover Square, Ayres, of the 
 
 county of Northampton, Esq., to Miss Ann Sampson, only daugh- 
 ter of John Sampson, of the county of Leicester, Esq., a young 
 lady of 10,000Z. fortune.— The Henry Murray, Esq., a young 
 gentleman possessed of a plentiful estate in the county of Wilts, 
 at St. George's, Bloomsbury, to Mrs. Wicks, relict of Simon 
 Wicks, Esq., a fortune of 12,000Z. and 400?. per annum. — Lieu- 
 tenant Cotton Dent, of the Eoyal Navy, son of Digby Dent, Esq., 
 late Commodore in the West Indies, to Miss Kitty Bowerbank, 
 daughter of Thomas Bowerbank, Esq., barrack -master of Ports- 
 mouth, a lady of merit and fortune. — Villiers Fitz-Gerald, Esq., to 
 Miss Newcomen, eldest daughter to Col. Newcomen, in teland, a 
 most agreeable young lady, with a large fortune." 
 
 "When upon the subject of marriage we may mention 
 a feature of the time which is often alluded to, as the Fleet 
 marriages. 
 
 At Keiths Chapel in May Fair, and at the chapel in the 
 Fleet, children could get married in the reign of the two 
 first Georges for a couple of crowns at any time of the day 
 or night. Six thousand persons were said at the time to 
 have been married annually at the former chapel. 
 
 Witchcraft and Superstitions Past and Present. 
 
 To record the wonderful delusion that all classes laboured 
 under for centuries with respect to witchcraft, and a small 
 part of the follies and atrocities that resulted, would require 
 a volume. Let it be premised that the firm belief in this 
 subject was by no means the opprobrium of the lower classes 
 
WITCHCKArT AND SUPERSTITION. 523 
 
 of society. High and low for a long period equally figure 
 in the path of this superstitution. 
 
 It was believed, and that universally, that a malevolent 
 spirit took possession of some human being; and through 
 this agent worked out cruel, wicked, and devilish purposes. 
 Oddly enough, this bad spirit chose for his abode a female 
 advanced in years, and by choice one upon whom age had 
 exerted its greatest power. 
 
 King James I. gravely questioned Sir John Harrington, 
 why the devil did work more with ancient women than others. 
 Sir John, ever ready with a jest, said : " We are taught 
 thereof in scripture, where it is told that the devil walketh 
 in dry places." 
 
 The ill effects were produced through the agency of the 
 eyes. The old and ugly female was believed to have the 
 power of destroying health, causing dreadful and incurable 
 disease, inducing misfortune in the most uncommon way, and 
 quite blighting the most flourishing crops, by a glance of her 
 evil eye. 
 
 It may be asked whether the aged female was a consenting 
 party, or a simply passive object, without help or means of 
 rescue. The answer clearly is, that the woman was consi- 
 dered to be a willing, wicked partner in the diabolical acts, 
 and in no sense the pitiful victim of stern necessity and 
 spiritual Superiority. 
 
 Municipal archives three centuries ago exhibit the work- 
 ing of the fears of the burgesses. 
 
 The juries took up the investigation, and, we shall see, 
 admitted a merchant's widow, the party interested, to give 
 evidence as to the witch that had dealt harm to her : e. g. 
 in 1569, an entry was made at Lyme — 
 
 Item, we do find that Johane EUesdon, widow, upon her othe, 
 hatha declared before us that Ellen Walker is a wytche, and that 
 she will approve, and also that James Lugbase, uppon his othe 
 hathe declared before us, that the said Ellen Walker did saie unto 
 the saide Johane Elsdon, that she could witche her no more. 
 
524 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 meaning that she had exerted all her power against her. 
 Some old persons finding themselves to be incessantly per- 
 secuted raged against the members of society at large, and 
 adopted the odious name assigned them, and no doubt, 
 though with danger to themselves, inspired fear in those who 
 were objects of especial hate. 
 
 Where did the mania against witches begin? Among 
 the ignorant and low in station ? The question may not be 
 important, as nearly all were ignorant. The language of 
 Bishop Jewell's sermon before Queen Elizabeth, in 15^^, 
 was enough to throw a whole country into confusion': — 
 " It may please your grace to understand that witches and 
 sorcerers, within the last four years, are marvellously in- 
 creased within this yoiu* Grace's realm. Your Grace's sub- 
 jects pine away even unto the death ; their colour fadeth — 
 their flesh rotteth — their speech is benumbed — their senses 
 are bereft ! I pray God they may never practise further 
 than upon the subject!" 
 
 For a woman to be old and ugly was, diuing many reigns, 
 to live in positive danger. Any one might expose her life 
 to imminent peril upon the idlest imputation. We know 
 what numbers perished at the gallows up to 1682, when three 
 poor women from Bideford were sentenced to death at 
 Exeter assize for " bewitching several persons, destroying 
 ships at sea, and cattle by land." These women are said to 
 have been the last that suffered. 
 
 Whenever any remarkable disaster befel a member of a 
 family, no difficulty was generally felt in ascribing it to 
 some old person. Epilepsy was universally treated as pro- 
 ceeding from witchcraft. Neighbouring gossips assembled ; 
 they pitied the patient, and railed at the wicked author 
 of so much suffering. The patient heard what passed, and 
 adopted ail the charges and suggestions of the assembled 
 gossips. 
 
 A real case of suspicion of witchcraft here given will pre- 
 sent an ordinary type of the class, and serve to convey a clear 
 understanding of the sort of proceedings by which such 
 numbers perished. 
 
EPILEPSY ATTRIBUTED TO SORCERY. 525 
 
 Deanes, the wife of Mictael Grimmerton, was sent to gaol 
 in 1687 to be tried as a witch. 
 
 Richard Storch gave evidence that his son, Nathaniel 
 Storch, was eighteen years of age. When in a (clearly 
 epileptic) fit that lasted two hours, during which time he 
 required six persons to hold him, the son declared he saw 
 the apparition of Deanes Grimmerton, and he had fits every 
 day for a week after, and during the fits he saw the appari- 
 tion of the before-mentioned. Several persons struck at the 
 place where the afflicted lad pointed without effect. Na- 
 thaniel said " she was too cunning for them " and desired 
 them not to strike at it any more, for when they did so it did 
 increase his torture. 
 
 Pins. — After several of the fits there have been several 
 pins taken out of different parts of his body, and one iron 
 nail. 
 
 He declared partly what clothes Deanes Grimmerton wore, 
 although sometime she changed some garment. 
 
 The father finally attested that he verily thought his son 
 was the worse for the said Deanes Grimmerton, he crying out 
 so against her. 
 
 Pins taken out of the body. — Elizabeth Storch, the mother, 
 gave her evidence at length to the same effect. She added 
 that the pins were of brass, and were taken out of various 
 parts of her son's body without drawing any blood after 
 them. 
 
 How the witch acted. — Nathaniel Storch crowns the evi- 
 dence with an account of how he was practised upon. 
 
 Being at work as a tailor, 9th April, in the house of a 
 townswoman, Deanes Grimmerton came in about one o'clock 
 with a pipe filled with tobacco in her hand, and having lighted 
 the same handed it to the witness, who having smoked a part 
 handed it to another, and so the pipe went round till it was 
 smoked out. He was ill immediately after, and so had con- 
 tinued. 
 
 How thetoitch was dressed. — He had seen the apparition 
 of Deanes Grimmerton last night upon the middle beam of 
 the chamber window, clothed with a long crowned hat, a long 
 
526 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 red whittle, a red coat, a green apron, and a white cloak 
 about her neck under her whittle, and afterwards go out at 
 the upper part of the window. 
 
 Imprisonment takes from, the power of the witch. — 
 Nathaniel believed Deanes Grimmerton is the cause of 
 his fits. Since her imprisonment his fits and pain have 
 abated. 
 
 Mary Tillman deposed to having a daughter about eigh- 
 teen years of age. She had been subject to fits, in which 
 eight men could hardly hold her, for three years. 
 
 Brass pins extracted. — About a year after her illness 
 began several brass pins were taken from her daughter's 
 shoulders, breast, arms, knees, legs, and feet. 
 
 fallen the witch appears the pains are increased. — At this 
 time her daughter saw the apparition of Deanes Grimmerton, 
 and then was in greater pains than before. 
 
 About fourteen weeks before her daughter's death she 
 met Deanes Grimmerton, who abused her in words, saying, 
 " Now thou hast no fits ; now art not bewitched." Imme- 
 diately after, the young woman fell into a pining condition, 
 and so continued until her death. During the said fourteen 
 weeks she was frequently molested by the apparition of the 
 said Deanes Grimmerton. 
 
 Burning the pins taken from the body. — At a certain time 
 when the pins were put into a heap of coals to be burned, 
 the young woman was more in torture and pain than 
 before. 
 
 The bewitched is fastened to a stool. — After a fit of three 
 hours her daughter being desired to rise from the stool to go 
 to bed, she answered that she could not, for Deanes Grim- 
 merton kept her down. Two women went to move her 
 from the stool but could not till they had puUed Elizabeth 
 and the stool all along the house. 
 
 The witch lies upon the afflicted girl. — Tuesday night be- 
 fore Elizabeth's death a neighbour came to see her, when she 
 complained that she could not presently make an answer, and 
 said afterwards the reason was that Deanes Grimmerton was 
 upon her on the bed. 
 
WITCH-FINDEES. — PIN-VOMITING. 527 
 
 Upon which matters Mary Tillman had suspicion that 
 Deanes Grimmerton was the cause of her daughter's death. 
 
 This evidence doomed Deanes Grimmerton to trial by a 
 mittimus from Mr. Standerwick, Mayor of Lyme Regis, 
 June 1st, 1687. 
 
 We find no mention of recourse being had to test whether 
 the accused was a witch or not. The church Bible was not 
 used as a counterpoise, nor was Deanes Grimmerton, who 
 smoked the social pipe, thrown into deep water to prove 
 her innocence or guilt. The kind of evidence adduced was 
 deemed sufficient. Where there was a doubt, the witch 
 finder, or witch prover's services, would have been called 
 in if procurable. These professionals went round in some 
 parts, and dreadful is it to contemplate the horrors that 
 ensued after the visits to towns of the arch witch finder. 
 The authorities countenanced these impostors. The bell- 
 man sometimes went round to announce the arrival of the 
 witch-finder. It is almost incredible that the same bellman 
 gave out that any one having a complaint against any 
 woman as being a witch, should give in her name, and she 
 should be brought to undergo the ordeal by having a pin 
 run into her by this itinerant. One is led to exclaim, what 
 a time for aged matrons ! Without proofs of guilt to be 
 led at once to torture ! 
 
 In this case the young persons in their fits had pins and 
 a nail taken from them without any blood following, as the 
 evidence shows. There is no pin-vomiting in this instance 
 such as was sometimes exhibited. Pins were in some way 
 or another deemed a necessary accompaniment to a case of 
 bewitchment. The parents, gossips, or patient, took care 
 that what they believed to be a clear case should not break 
 down for want of a due display of pins, which we see were 
 by some parties burnt, according, no doubt, to prescribed 
 mystic rites. We might laugh at such scenes were it not 
 that a human life often depended upon the result. At last 
 the exhibition of the pins took place in open court. A woman 
 said "to be bewitched had placed pins in her stomacher, and 
 by a dexterous dropping of her head in her pretended fits. 
 
528 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 picked up the supply for each successive ejection. Chief 
 Justice North threw into disrepute this exhibition, which 
 he witnessed, and detected the fraud. 
 
 Let us turn from the time when all believed in the exist- 
 ence and malevolent acts of witches to that in which the 
 punishment of death being no longer imposed, and it being 
 futile to bring charges against any one, the age when people 
 believed in witchcraft was supposed to be past. True it 
 is that the upper and middle classes have shaken off this 
 belief in a heathenish superstition ; but in every county of 
 the south of England the power of witches is acknowledged, 
 and the belief influences too largely human actions, stands 
 in the way of the real progress of knowledge, while the 
 dictates of Christianity are rendered nugatory as to being 
 an absolute guide and rule of conduct. 
 
 A brief narrative of a tale of witchcraft, in the year 
 1840, drawn from the author's own observation, will illus- 
 trate the current of present opinion. 
 
 WiUiam Way, a little boy, the son of a shoemaker of 
 West Dorset, was, like Nathaniel Storch, attacked with 
 epilepsy, which medical men could only alleviate, for cure 
 was not in their power. The boy's fits were frequent, and 
 painful to the beholders, as all such epileptic paroxysms 
 are. Spectators were many. From the first, when the 
 aihnent was too stubborn for doctors, and the contortions 
 of a long fit were hideous, all agreed that the boy had been 
 overlooked, or looked upon, that is, bewitched. 
 
 The poor boy heard nothing from the assembled relatives 
 and gossips but about his special enemy, a tall aged female; 
 good Betty Trayte, whose advanced age had implanted a 
 sternness upon her countenance which had caused some to 
 judge her to be a witch. In his fits he screamed out and 
 exclaimed against poor old Betty Trayte, just as Storch 
 did against Deanes Grimmerton. Gossips in numbers looked 
 in and bore away incorrect and wonderful accounts of what 
 they saw and heard. Some Dissenting ministers were ap- 
 plied to in order to counteract by prayer the effects of the 
 bewitchment. A collection was made from thirty young 
 
■WITCHCRAFT. — DEANES GKIMMERTON. 529 
 
 womeiij virgins, of a penny each. With the money a con- 
 spicuous silver ring was purchased, having, it was believed, 
 the power of averting all harm that the witch had or might 
 meditate against the lad, especially if made from the sacra- 
 ment money. 
 
 A mother, about the same time, stood at the west door 
 of Exeter cathedral to beg pence from young women for 
 the same object. 
 
 The "virgins'" ring and other charms were judged to 
 have had a good effect. After a time the fits ceased, and 
 the boy grew to be a stout lad, and hired himself to clean 
 boots and shoes. Being one morning absent from his duties, 
 it was announced that he had been afflicted with a dreadful 
 fit, which would incapacitate him for his situation ; that 
 he was the worse for some evil person ; that it was too bad 
 of her ; that she ought to be made to suffer, for the poor 
 boy had done Jier no harm. Some wonderful, indeed quite 
 impossible feats performed by the boy in his fits, were re- 
 ported ; how he worked himself like an eel through the bars 
 of his common chair, and what he said against his tormenter. 
 
 It was deliberately recommended that the lad's sufferings 
 should be put an end to by drawing blood from the witch 
 by means of a rusty nail. This had been done in nume- 
 rous instances of late years, with punishment to the operators. 
 The old woman in question applied to the authorities for 
 protection. She needed it ; great numbers, though they 
 meddled not in the matter, fully believed that the old 
 woman was a witch, and that drawing blood from her would 
 take away her power of doing mischief. 
 
 One century and a half had worked a change. Deanes 
 Grimmerton was no more guilty than Betty Trayte. When 
 the former lay under an imputation, all the classes of the 
 country town, her place of residence, firmly believed in 
 witchcraft: in 1840 the upper and middle classes, with 
 only a few exceptions, were too enlightened to entertain 
 any such superstition. Betty Trayte had the protection 
 of the law administered as it is by those who disbelieve 
 the existence of witches, who gave her their countenance. 
 
 M M 
 
530 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Other incidents — the nature of the disease, the sufferings, 
 the inability to cure on the part of the medical prac- 
 titioners, the calling out when in pain against the mali- 
 cious woman who had caused his agony, and other matters — 
 furnish a complete parallel. 
 
 Many, though they were exasperated against the witch, 
 did not like to own their belief in any such matter, but 
 talked with reserve. Like many who nail up an old shoe 
 in our vessels and houses, though not liking to own their 
 belief, yet consider it would be a pity to receive harm from 
 neglecting so easy a precaution. A piece of bacon stuck 
 with pins used to be suspended in chimneys to interrupt 
 witches in their descent, and so avert their visit. Toads 
 that gained access to a cellar or house were ejected, and 
 with the greatest care ; and no injury was offered, because 
 these were regarded, from being used &a familiars by witches, 
 with veneration or awe. 
 
 In both cases a cunning man, conjuror, or white witch, 
 had probably been often consulted. By this we mean a 
 clever, wonderful, beneficent being, who for a money con- 
 sideration interposes, and by magical arts, charms, and 
 spells, averts the evil eye of the witch from human beings 
 or cattle, and renders innocuous the devilish art and practice 
 of wicked old crones. A famous practitioner lived at West 
 Leigh, CO. Devon, near Wellington, who was succeeded by 
 his son. Persons came from three counties to consult this 
 white witch. They paid for consultation, charms, medicine, 
 and directions how to find out the stealers of property. 
 Prayers repeated backwards, and particular verses of the 
 Psalms, to be recited upon swallowing certain nostrums, 
 connected religion with superstition, and that for mammon : 
 being more imposing, the charge was higher. Some of 
 these fortune-tellers and dealers in nostrums, who point out 
 how the witch's designs may be frustrated, are very low in 
 the scale, are prodigiously crafty, and full of bombastic 
 tricking language. Still they drive their trade ; and while 
 they do so we have proofs that there yet exists a lai-ge 
 amount of ignorance and superstition. 
 
SUPERSTITION. — HAUNTED HOUSES. 531 
 
 It is believed that a seventh son can cure diseases, but that 
 a seventh son of a seventh son, and no female child born be- 
 tween, can cure the king's evil. Such a favoured individual 
 is really looked on with veneration. When at a farmhouse in 
 Axminster parish, in 1828, engaged in taking a view, though 
 other children were made to stand off, one little urchin was 
 allowed to lay hold of my pencils, &c. I saw that there 
 was something particular in this child, and addressed his 
 mother as follows : — " This little man appears to be a 
 favourite; I presume he is your little Benjamin." "He's 
 a seventh son, sir," said the mother. AiFecting an air of 
 surprise, I expressed myself at the instant as being one 
 very anxious to know what a seventh son could do ? The 
 mother, a very civil woman, told me that " she did think, 
 to cure all diseases, should be the seventh son of a seventh 
 son; but many folk do come to touch my son." In April, 
 1826, a respectable looking woman was engaged in collect- 
 ing a penny from each of thirty young women, unmarried ; 
 the money to be laid out in purchasing a silver ring, to cure 
 her son of epileptic fits. The money was to be freely given, 
 without any consideration, or else the charm would have 
 been destroyed. The young women gave their pence, be- 
 cause it would have been a pity for the lad to continue 
 afflicted if the charm would cure him. 
 
 Some houses are spoken of as being " troublesome " or 
 " haunted." Noises — the crowing of the cock by night, 
 and the death-watch — are fancied to have been heard before 
 the death of any person. 
 
 Thus writes Dr. Oliver : — " Such and so various are 
 the superstitions with which a short and precarious life is 
 embittered ; and by such empty practices do timid mortals 
 amuse and terrify themselves. They serve, however, to 
 remind us of the imperfection of our nature, unable, by 
 its own unassisted exertions, to disentangle itself from the 
 grovelling weaknesses of matter, to avert the evils of a 
 probationary state, or to govern or control effectually the 
 passions and affections of the mind." 
 
 Was not the ancient chronicler, Higden, premature in 
 
 M M 2 
 
532 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 his assertions respecting a change in superstitious practices 
 when he thus sings in his " Polychronicon " ? — 
 
 " Hos consuevit fallere 
 Et ad bella impingere 
 Merlini vaticinium, 
 Et frequens sortilegium ; 
 Jam ex convictu Saxonum 
 Commutantur in melius 
 Ut patet luce clarius." 
 
 The discovery of a thief by divination by the sieve and 
 shears, a superstition once greatly practised, is recorded in 
 Dorset in 1660. 
 
 One Cockeney lost a gold ring. Edward HiU caused a 
 sieve to turn round three times upon naming the party that 
 was suspected to have the ring, and made use of a pair of 
 shears in his discovery. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Hearn adds these remarks : — " This is one 
 of the most ancient modes of divination of which we have 
 any record. It was practised among the early Greeks, and 
 is mentioned by Theocritus, whose words, as translated by 
 Creech, are : — 
 
 " To Agrio, too, I made the same demand ; 
 A cunning woman she, I crossed her hand : 
 She turned the sieve and shears, and told me true. 
 That I should love and not be loved by you." 
 
 But it was resorted to by that people, not only in ques- 
 tions of love, but for similar purposes to that which Master 
 Cockeney had in view. Potter, Antiq. Grsec, vol. i. p. 352., 
 says, " This Koskinomanteia was generally practised to dis- 
 cover thieves, or others suspected of any crime, in this man- 
 ner: — they tied a thread to the sieve, by which it was 
 upheld, or else placed a pair of shears, which they held up 
 by two fingers, then prayed to the gods to direct and assist 
 them ; after that, they repeated the names of the persons 
 under suspicion, and he at whose name the sieve whirled 
 round, or moved, was thought to have committed the fact." 
 
HOW TO DISCOVER A THIEF, 533 
 
 The practice in this county was very similar. Grose tells 
 us, that to discover a thief by the sieve and shears, you 
 must stick the points of the shears in the wood of the 
 sieve, and let two persons support it balanced upright with 
 their two fingers ; then read a certain chapter in the Bible, 
 and afterwards ask St. Peter and St. Paul if A. or B. is 
 the thief, naming aU the persons you suspect. On naming 
 the real thief, the sieve wiU turn suddenly round about. 
 
 This superstition is mentioned in several old works treat- 
 ing on such subjects ; and Hudibras, p. ii. c. iii., speaks of 
 
 " the oracle of sieve and shears, 
 That turns as certain as the spheres." * 
 
 The Ordeal by touching a Corpse. 
 
 A LOVE affair, with its attendant murder and incidents 
 arising from the same, may be used to introduce some pecu- 
 liarities of the era. 
 
 In the year 1613, there lived in the country, on the 
 southern border of Somerset, near Wambrook, a Master 
 Babb, who advanced his suit to marry a widow near 
 Taunton. She gave him a refusal; but he afterwards 
 secreted himself in her brewhouse, in order to have an op- 
 portunity of again preferring his suit. 
 
 The widow, when she heard his offer, exclaimed, in the 
 emphatic language of the time, " Have thee, base rascal ? 
 No !" and struck him on the head with a pewter candlestick. 
 Babb killed her with sixteen wounds, and put the knife in a 
 wound, and in her hand, to make it be believed it was a case 
 of self-destruction. 
 
 Mr. Warre, an influential magistrate of Hestercombe 
 House, a seat near Taunton, believed the common opinion of 
 
 * Mr. T. Hearn, " Qui Quondam." 
 
 MM 3 
 
534 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEEN COUNTIES. 
 
 the time, that if the murderer touched the corpse of his victim 
 the blood would umnediately flow from the wound, and dis- 
 cover the guilty. This active magistrate caused the body to 
 be disinterred, that all the inhabitants living within a circle 
 of three miles might assemble to touch the body, and go 
 through this painful ordeal. Babb ran away to escape this 
 dreadful mode of testing each neighbouring inhabitant's in- 
 nocence. His racking conscience left him no repose : he re- 
 turned and yielded himself up to justice. 
 
 The Assizes for Somerset were held at Chard in 1613, 
 where Babb was tried, and received sentence. He was 
 hanged near Wambrook. Sir Symonds D'Ewes went to see 
 the execution from his school, or from Coaxden Hall, which 
 is at a short distance only from the former place. To that 
 noted writer we are indebted for this account of the episode 
 before narrated. 
 
 Skimmington Riding. 
 
 This celebration, public visitation, saturnalia, punishment 
 administered under the powerful form of ridicule in the midst 
 of a civilisation directed by law, yet entirely lawless, in fact 
 a kind of Lynching, — stiU holds its ground, and so far as 
 my observation extends is not likely to become obsolete. 
 
 It is too marked a feature in an account of the customs of 
 several counties to be omitted. The following epitome of 
 the Skimmington is from a conununication I made to the 
 late Sir Walter Scott.* Brand says none of the commenta- 
 tors on " Hudibras " have attempted an elucidation of the 
 ceremony, which, however, Hogarth has illustrated. 
 
 Skimmington riding is, to a certain extent, a moral agent, 
 not perhaps so much in restraining the vicious as in causing 
 them to shun public observation, thereby not holding out bad 
 examples to the rising youth of both sexes ; — in a word, it 
 
 * In 1828. It has since appeared in my History of Lyme Regis. 
 
SKIMMINGTON EIDIKG. 535 
 
 checks those instances of openly profligate and licentious 
 conduct which might else become too prevalent among the 
 lower orders, who cannot, like their superiors, have recourse 
 to legal proceedings against the person who has injured them, 
 or divorce ; it brands with infamy all gross instances of 
 licentiousness ; and exposes to lasting ridicule those couples 
 who by their dissensions disturb the quiet and order of their 
 neighbourhood, and so set a bad example, either by struggles 
 for domestic ascendancy, or arising from quarrelsome dispo- 
 sitions. A Skimmington riding makes many laugh ; but the 
 parties for whom they ride never lose the ridicule and dis- 
 grace which it attaches. So far it is a punishment, like the 
 visit of Mumbo Jumbo in Africa. The following are the 
 principal causes for riding the Skimmington : — 
 
 1. When a man and his wife quarrel, and he gives up to 
 her. 2. When a woman is unfaithful to her husband, and 
 he patiently submits without resenting her conduct. 3. Any 
 grossly licentious conduct on the part of married persons. 
 
 The first cause appears to answer that recorded in " Hudi- 
 bras," canto ii. line 685. The knight, having mistaken a 
 Skimmington for some other procession, is undeceived as 
 follows : — 
 
 " Quoth Ealpho, " You mistake the matter ; 
 For all th' antiquity you smatter 
 Is but a riding used of course, 
 When the grey mare's the better horse. 
 When o'er the breeches greedy women ' 
 
 Fight to extend their vast dominion, 
 And in the cause impatient Grizzle 
 
 Has drubbed her husband with 
 
 And brought him under covert-baron 
 To turn her vassal with a murrain ; 
 
 * * # •* 
 
 # # * * 
 
 And they, in mortal battle vanquished, 
 Are of their charter disenfranchised.' " 
 
 About dusk two individuals, one armed with a skimmer, 
 the other with a ladle, come out of some obscure street, at- 
 
 M M 4 
 
536 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES, 
 
 tended by a crowd, whose laughter, huzzas, &c., emulate the 
 well-known charivari of the French. The two performers 
 are sometimes in a cart, at other times on a donkey ; one 
 personating the wife, the other the husband. They beat 
 each other furiously with the culinary weapons above de- 
 scribed, and, warmed by the applause and presence of so 
 many spectators (for all turn out to see a SMmmington), 
 their dialogue attains a freedom, except in using surnames, 
 only comparable with their gestures. On arriving at the 
 house of the parties represented in this moving drama, ani- 
 mation is at its height : the crowd usually stay at that spot 
 some minutes, and then traverse the town. The performers 
 are remunerated by the spectators : the parties that parade 
 the streets with the performers sweep with besoms the doors 
 of those who are likely to require a similar visitation. See 
 Dr. King's " Miscellany " : — 
 
 " When the young people ride the Skimmington, 
 There is a general trembling in the town ; 
 Not only he for whom the party rides 
 Suffers, but they sweep other doors besides ; 
 And by that hieroglyphic does appear 
 That the good woman is the master there.'' 
 
 Mr. Douce derives Skimmington from the skimming-ladle 
 used in the procession. 
 
 The following letter from Sir Walter Scott will prove, I 
 doubt not, highly interesting : — 
 
 To Mr. George Roberts. 
 
 " SiK, — I am obliged by your curious letter upon the subject 
 of the Skimmington. We had, or perhaps I might say still have, 
 a simular ritual of popular interference in Scotland, in case of 
 gross scandal, or nuptial transgressions and public quarrels in a 
 household. It is called " riding the stang," the peccant party 
 being seated across a pole (or stang) in no very comfortable 
 position. You will find some notice of the custom in Jamieson's 
 Scottish Dictionary, voce Stang. I think the Doctor does not 
 mention that men and women also were sometimes exposed to 
 
ACCOUNT OF " 8KIMMINGTON." 537 
 
 ride the stang on account of incontinence. Burns made some 
 clever verses (not in his collected works) on a comrade of his who 
 had been accessory to such a saturnalian scene of punishment, in 
 which the exposed female had suffered bodily injury, upon which 
 account the regular police had looked out after the parties who 
 had interfered with their vocation. I have ] read in Brand's 
 " Popular Antiquities," or some such authority, that scholars in 
 the English universities were subjected to the stang when they 
 neglect prayers. You will find a poem on the Skimmington 
 among Prior's poems — not the folio edition, where it is omitted, 
 but in the large collection. When they ride the Skimmington, 
 it would seem they swept the doors of those whom they threat- 
 ened with similar discipline. * » * * 
 
 " I am. Sir, your much obliged servant, 
 
 " Walter Scott. 
 " Abbotsford, Melrose, 
 August 2nd, 1828." 
 
 As must happen in all popular demonstrations, the truth of 
 the charge rests with some irresponsible party — some one 
 who Is to perform in the moving revelry it may be, or an in- 
 terested person. 
 
 In many celebrations of Skimmington riding I never knew 
 the justice of the affair called in question but once : a charge 
 of immorality had been brought by a degraded witness whose 
 false testimony occasioned the Skimmington. 
 
 To prove how this matter clings to a man or woman for 
 life, we wiU adduce an episode at a late Dorchester assize, 
 where a barrister addressed a witness with " I believe you 
 have had a Skimmington for you ? " The fact could not be 
 denied. The witness was abashed and damaged by the 
 ridicule of the circumstance. 
 
 Natural Phenomena attributed, through Superstition and Igno- 
 rance of Physical Science, to Mysterious and Supernatural 
 Causes. 
 
 OuK ancestors, before the diffusion of that mass of scien- 
 tific knowledge which the greatest and wisest of all en- 
 
538 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 lightened nations are labouring to accumulate, never dreamt 
 of attributing great phenomena to natural causes ; to account 
 for them upon true reasoning of the physical causes was out 
 of their power. They had recourse to the mighty, unex- 
 plained, invisible, latent workings of the Almighty, and 
 would have shrunk from, as impious, the expounder of those 
 beauteous laws which are established throughout creation. 
 
 When the belief had firmly rooted itself that the affairs of 
 mankind, whether troubled or smooth, the deliberate wicked- 
 ness of courts, and the flagrant crimes of the turbulent, were 
 aU foreshadowed and portended by extraordinary appear- 
 ances of earth, sea, and heaven, it follows that we must 
 expect men to be intensely interested at the manifestation of 
 all these, and at the reports of them. In the absence of 
 mysterious phenomena, hmnble politicians and venders of 
 broad sheets forged rumours of them, and Scripture was 
 wrested to serve the purpose of the mystics. 
 
 Earthquakes, to a reader of history, appear to have been 
 very frequent. England would scarcely win its title to be 
 terra firma if we received as literal the statements of " con- 
 vulsions" and "swallowings up," of "hills removed," and 
 such disturbances. Dean Conybeare writes that there has 
 not been a shock of an earthquake in this country sufficient 
 to throw down a church tower. 
 
 The lower orders in the country have not yet received 
 their share, some no part, of the generally diffused natural 
 sciences. They, as well as the classes immediately above 
 them, as too often happens, are disposed to attribute many 
 phenomena to the agency of earthquakes. 
 
 The great landslip of Dowlands and Bindon, S. E. Devon, 
 Dec. 25th, 1839, took place after a wet season. Great slips 
 were caused on the Jura, and other places. Such had re- 
 sulted from well known causes in the same locality. Deans 
 Buckland and Conybeare happened to be near at the time. 
 Their explanations were without much effect upon the as- 
 sembled wonderers. Their science was ridiculed; local 
 history was treated as a fable. About the year 1646, a 
 similar event at Pinney, near that spot, drew good Bishop 
 
NATURAL PHENOMENA. 539 
 
 Hall, who went to the synod of Dort from Exeter, whose 
 meditations upon the earthquake savour of his age. Men 
 of education, if they feel that much and accurate knowledge 
 of a particular branch of natural science is required on any 
 particular occasion, have recourse to those who have made 
 such their study. This could not be done in Charles the 
 First's reign. 
 
 Eclipses continued to be viewed with awe to within a 
 century and half ago. Sunday, 25th Feb., 1589, was called 
 Dark Sunday before Shrove tide, owing to the eclipse on 
 that sabbath day, " fearful to all people's sight to behold." 
 The appearance of a parhelion was deemed sufficiently won- 
 derful to be entered in parish registers. 
 
 In a storm which Sir Symonds D'Ewes calls the " great 
 tempest" of 17th of June, 1611, the poor of Wambrook, 
 near Chard, came to the school where he was to beg the 
 scholars to come home and read prayers to them. An 
 ancient man said there was a prophesy touching this tempest 
 before it came, as if the world should then have ended. 
 
 The Rev. Andrew Paschall, inducted, in 1662, rector of 
 Chedzoy in Sedgemoor, near Bridgewater, was accounted a 
 learned man of his day. He possessed a turn of mind cha- 
 racteristic of the period. His attention was directed to 
 those curious and rare phenomena which were supposed to 
 augur and foreshadow portentous occurrences. Before the 
 Duke of Monmouth's rebellion he wrote to a great person 
 to represent to the king his apprehensions arising from what 
 he had lately observed, and to entreat the king to cast an 
 eye that way. 
 
 The phenomena which disturbed the worthy rector shall 
 be described in his own language : — - 
 
 " Before our troubles came on, we had such signs as used to be 
 deemed forerunners of such things. In May, 1680, there was that 
 monstrous birth at Isle Brewers, a parish in Somerset, which at 
 that time was much taken notice of — two female children joined 
 in their bodies from the breast downwards. They were bom 
 May the 19th, and christened by the names of Aquila and Pris- 
 cilla. May the 29th I saw them well and likely to live. About 
 
540 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 at the same time, reports ■went of divers others in the inferior 
 sorts of animals, both the oviparous and the viviparous kinds. 
 But perhaps many of these, and other odd things then talked of, 
 owed, if not their being, yet their dress, to superstition and fancy. 
 In the January following, Monday the 3rd, about seven in the 
 morning, we had an earthquake, which I myself felt here. It 
 came with a whizzing gust of wind from the west end of my 
 house, which shook it. This motion was observed in Bridgewater, 
 Taunton, Wells, and other places, and near some caverns in 
 Mendip Hills, and was said to be accompanied with thundering 
 noises. In the end of the year 1684, December the 21st, were 
 seen from this place, at sunrising, parbelii, and this when, in a 
 clear, sharp, frosty morning, there were no clouds to make the 
 reflection. It was probably from the thickness of the atmo- 
 sphere. The place of the fight, which was in the following sum- 
 mer, was near a line drawn from the eyes of the spectator to 
 these mock suns." 
 
 There is a letter from the same gentleman to John 
 Aubrey, Esq., 1683, respecting " many prodigious things 
 performed by some discontented demon." 
 
 In one case cited none but nonconforming ministers were 
 called to their assistance by the poor afflicted people. 
 
 The Decay of old Mercantile Coast Towns, and their Revival 
 as Watering Places. — Altered Manners. — Fossils and early 
 Indications of Geology. 
 
 Our subject leads to the singular fate that attended many 
 of our south coast towns in the course of the last century. 
 They died out as mercantile coast towns ; and when near 
 to a point of extinction, they rose, phcenix-like, imder a 
 metamorphosed appearance, and enabled a large and new 
 class in society to gratify their wishes and a novel taste. 
 
 The decline of these towns was nearly simultaneous, and 
 was due to the same causes. Their rise was cotempo- 
 
DECLINE OF COAST TOAVNS. 541 
 
 raneous, and is attributable to a novel phase whicli society 
 took on, to new habits, and to the effects of new medical 
 prescriptive directions. 
 
 Many of our coast towns had been the residence of mer- 
 chants for several centuries, who traded in very small 
 vessels, as was then the custom, to foreign parts. Some 
 towns had manufactures of woollen goods carried on in ad- 
 dition to fishing, and a little trade in shipping. 
 
 The war with France, after the revolution and expulsion of 
 James II., put an end to the trade with that country, which 
 has never been re-established. As the old families, the 
 honoured merchants, died off, there were no successors. 
 Their sons withdrew altogether ; or if they remained, there 
 was no longer any commerce to occupy their attention. 
 The vessels used in foreign trade gave way to ships which 
 were unsuited to small ports, and large and populous towns 
 drew away and retained all the foreign trade. 
 
 Some of our towns straightway declined in a rapid manner, 
 and were in a very low condition. 
 
 Weymouth and Lyme, old coast towns, are remarkable 
 instances of this decline. 
 
 The Cobb dues at Lyme, in 1708-9, only amounted to 
 131. 12s. lOd. 
 
 In 1718 the shambles were presented as being in danger 
 of falling. Juries had a special duty to perform, which was, 
 to present the dangerous buildings. There were numerous 
 presentments about the year 1724. Mr, Tatchell, agent to 
 Henry Fane, Esq., wrote his employer, in 1743, of the 
 poverty of the butchers who had rent to pay in the shambles, 
 of the Cobb collector, and of the difficulty of collecting any 
 money. 
 
 In 1747 the roads and ways were out of repair. The old 
 names of families who had lived many years in the town no 
 longer appear. The state of the streets, from the account 
 of them furnished by the old people, was truly pitiable. 
 The constables present, in 1762, things " as well as 
 usual." 
 
 There was little shipping, and very few respectable in- 
 
542 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 habitants about the year 1750. Houses were of little value : 
 purchasers could scarcely be procured on any terms, and 
 some were literally given away ; while others are known to 
 have been offered, but refused I About this time a weaver's 
 four large rooms, and weaving room besides, let for one 
 shilling a week. The weavers wove the serges at their own 
 houses : the cloth was not dyed. The lower street had large 
 high buildings, some of which projected at each story, which 
 had been the abode in the former century of rich families, 
 but from the effects of time, and neglect of the poorer occu- 
 piers, were in a state of extreme decay. The population 
 had dwindled to less than a thousand inhabitants, so that 
 a great many houses remained unoccupied, and were so 
 neglected, that it is an incontestable fact, that no one could 
 walk with safety in the streets during a high wind, which 
 frequently blew down parts of the most tottering buildings. 
 From the year 1692 to 1772 above 118 houses had fallen to 
 ruin, besides many burnt down and never rebuilt and washed 
 away by the sea. A petition to parliament set forth the 
 inability of the town to pay the land tax, which had in- 
 creased to 6s. in the pound, and had been returned in- 
 super. 
 
 As, the old houses fell down, or, having become dangerous, 
 were removed, poor people built themselves with the mate- 
 rials tenements of little value. Some old buildings were 
 repaired in such an excessively clumsy manner as to destroy 
 aU vestiges of former proportions. 
 
 There were no houses in the environs ; there was then a 
 town^s end in reality, where a century before posts had been 
 driven in to keep out the Cavaliers. Broad Street was in- 
 habited by lace-makers, who worked at their Lyme-lace, — 
 an elegant material, which, however, did not enrich the poor 
 people engaged in that trade. 
 
 Most of the serges wove were shipped from Exeter to 
 Ancona. This source of employment ceased as the trade 
 was transferred to the north. 
 
 Most of the houses in Broad Street had porches. An old 
 person described, among other things, how ladies in the de- 
 
ILL SUPPLY OF SHOPS. — SMUGGLING. 543 
 
 cline of life used to sit and stand in their porches on summer 
 evenings, to talk to their friends and also to inferiors, in full 
 dress — a white apron instead of a check one, ruffles, &c. 
 Two or three ladies of the principal families were styled 
 " madame." No strangers ever came in the summer. When 
 the members of the Fane family attended elections, &c., they 
 were received by a gentleman named Lisle, at his house in 
 the Butter Market. 
 
 The shops were so ill supplied, that, excepting at fairs, 
 very few articles not of ordinary consumption could be pro- 
 cured. The old houses rapidly disappeared, and hovels suc- 
 ceeded in their places. No white bread was sold. The 
 labourers worked for 4d a day. 
 
 Smuggling was carried on to a great extent, in spite of 
 the check it had sustained twenty years before, when the 
 regular trade being interfered with, informations were laid, 
 and many persons were imprisoned. Smuggling, the collo- 
 quial term for the contraband trade, was viewed as a venial 
 offence by all western people of every degree. 
 
 And have not varied circumstances produced decline and 
 utter decay in other towns of foreign countries, as well as in 
 our own land? Read what the historian of the Popes, 
 Ranke (Vol. i. p. 480.), records of the second decline of the 
 Eternal city. 
 
 During the absence of the Popes in Avignon, this Rome 
 of the middle ages sunk into equal decay with that ancient 
 Rome which had so long lain in ruins : — 
 
 " When Eugenius IV. returned to Eome in the year 1443, it 
 was become a city of herdsmen ; its inhabitants were not dis- 
 tinguishable from the peasants of the neighbouring country. The 
 hills had long been abandoned, and the only part inhabited was 
 the plain along the windings of the Tiber ; there was no pave- 
 ment in the narrow streets, and these were rendered yet darker 
 by the balconies and buttresses which propped one house against 
 another ; the cattle wandered about as in a village. From San 
 Silvestro to the Porta del Popolo, all was garden and marsh, the 
 haunt of flocks of wild ducks. The very memory of antiquity 
 seemed almost eiFaced ; the Capitol was become the Goats' Hill, 
 
544 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 the Forum Romanum the Cows' field ; the strangest legends were 
 associated with the few remaining monuments." 
 
 The aged favoured me with many interesting details 
 respecting the state of things when they were young. Many 
 were laudatores temporis acti, and saw nothing good in any- 
 thing recent. Some, however, were dispassionate, and com- 
 pared with great justice the relative advantages of the two 
 periods. Such were Benj. Bazeley of Lyme, and Mary 
 Bartlett of Exeter, who conversed with Mr. Edwin Chad- 
 wick in Jan. 1855. 
 
 Bazeley said the town was very poor indeed. Meat sold 
 — beef at 2d. and \%d. alb., sirloin 3c?.; veal was never 
 sold by weight, but by the joint. Cheese, the best raw 
 mUk, sold at 4<f. Clothing of all kinds was very dear, and 
 people were very ragged. He remembered a man bringing 
 potatoes in panniers; people used to buy three halfpenny 
 worth. He candidly summed up, after a consideration of 
 wages, and the prices of articles, that the humble members 
 of society could do as well now as then, in spite of the cheap- 
 ness of some things at that time, upon which he dwelt with 
 pleasure. 
 
 In respect of diet, Bazeley spoke of the great use of meat 
 broth, and the lending of some one day by a friendly neigh- 
 bour to another, who made some in return, and repaid the 
 kindness. 
 
 Mary Bartlett, like Bazeley, viewed everything as im- 
 proved. She saw the benefit of the sanitary measures in 
 operation. Two-thirds of the Exeter people were pitted 
 with the small-pox. They were then worse fed. There 
 were only one baker and one butcher in Exeter. She de- 
 scribed the struggles she had at times in crowds to get 
 bread from the baker, and bring it away quite hot. Chil- 
 dren were not fed then on bread and butter as now-a-day. 
 Though provisions were cheaper, wages were lower in pro- 
 portion, and the low wages were more frequently spent in 
 drunkenness. 
 
 The perambulating the limits of the parish on the Roga- 
 
"BEATING THE BOUNDS." 545 
 
 tion days, that is, the three days before Ascension, was 
 continued from the ancient practice of walking round in 
 solemn religious procession, chanting the Litanies. The path 
 which the crowd took is often referred to as " the procession 
 path." The perambulation was called " beating the bounds." 
 Some refreshment was furnished by the churchwardens. 
 
 Instead of chanting Litanies, parish fought with parish 
 with bats, in the presence of the clergy. 
 
 Seeing that this was disused, the old woman pointed out 
 the improved state of manners. 
 
 There were no carpets, but only rushes on the floors. In 
 coast towns, sand did the work of rushes. 
 
 Carpets gained a signal victory over rushes ; and cleanli- 
 ness rejoices at the result of the contest. Brussels carpets 
 were introduced from Tournay in 1745. By the year 1760 
 the floors of all respectable houses were carpeted. 
 
 The shops of Exeter had no windows, but were open like 
 fishmongers' shops in large towns.* 
 
 Though the town of Lyme had so declined, the old cor- 
 poration observances of high days and remarkable occasions 
 were kept up in their pristine state. The old people referred 
 to these celebrations with great delight, and treated the 
 non-lighting up of bonfires as proofs of degeneracy. Let 
 us take as an example of one year's festivities what was 
 done in the mayoralty of Arthur Raymond of Lyme, in 
 1660-61: — 
 
 £ s. d. 
 
 Expences at the "Lyon" when the King was pro- 
 claimed ------ 
 
 To the boys for a bonfire at the same time - 
 
 To do on the King of Prussia's beating Count Daun 
 
 Expences at the " Three Cups " the flth of Nov. 
 
 To George Baker for an entertainment on the King of 
 Prussia's beating Count Daun 
 
 Paid the gunner's note for firing, &c. 
 
 Expences at the " Lion " on taking Bel Isle - 
 
 Carried forward - £19 2 4 
 
 * Western Times, Jan. 13. 1855. 
 
 N N 
 
 7 18 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 5 19 
 
 4 
 
 2 10 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 1 19 
 
 
 
£ 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 19 
 
 2 
 
 4 
 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 5 
 
 19 
 
 4 
 
 13 
 
 15 
 
 10 
 
 
 7 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 £40 
 
 19 
 
 
 
 546 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 Brought forward 
 To the boys for a bonfire . - - - 
 
 Expences at the "Three Cups" on taking Pondi- 
 
 cherry - - - 
 
 Expences at the " Three Cups " on the coronation - 
 Paid Mary Jackson for cards and ribboiids at the 
 
 coronation - - 
 
 To Charles Eoe for looking after the guns and firing 
 To farmer Partridge for furze for a bonfire at the 
 
 coronation . . . 
 
 Lyme has been adduced as a type of the coast town 
 once commercial, but which had lost its foreign trade — 
 even its kidnapping — in every foreign country, then a 
 clothing and lace-making town, with scarce any intercourse 
 with persons abroad or at home. A coach was a novel sight, 
 and drew the inhabitants to view what was so unusual. 
 
 Weymouth might equally well have been cited as an 
 example of decline. The same lament would have applied 
 to it as to Lyme and other old maritime towns. Weymouth 
 had fallen very low, and was the residence of fishermen and 
 smugglers. Poverty was great, and tenements fell down 
 from neglect. Certain rents of assize amounted to only 14Z. 
 In 1740 the half of Charlotte Row was offered to an 
 individual if he would enclose the remainder, which he 
 declined, considering it as a bad speculation. * 
 
 At Brighton a spot of ground was offered to a hair- 
 dresser in fee, upon condition of shaving the possessor. 
 The terms were declined. The land soon became very 
 valuable. 
 
 Commerce did not revive, and the woollen trade was 
 doomed to decline also, and to be transferred to other 
 localities. 
 
 The arrest that took place in the further decline of the sea- 
 port towns, — the metamorphose in the habits of society, — 
 
 * Ellis's Hist, of Weymouth. 
 
WONDERFUL CHANGES. 547 
 
 are worthy of consideration. Great effects were produced ; 
 manners were altered ; old towns revived, and new towns 
 rapidly arose. 
 
 The middle of the eighteenth century is the epoch when 
 this remarkable change, that has to be described, became 
 perceptible. 
 
 Before the year 1750 the sea on our southern coast had 
 ever been as pure ; — the hills and under cliffs as grand 
 and captivating, still no inland residents came to the fairy 
 land. There is in history no record of any summer sea- 
 side pleasure-taking or health-seeking visits ; not a word 
 of bathing. There never had been any convenience for 
 sea-bathing, nor any hot baths. In Queen Elizabeth's 
 reign any scholar of Cambridge University who dared to 
 bathe by day or night was set in the stocks all the day ; 
 and, for the second offence, to be whipped with rods. 
 
 Whether is the more strange ? the neglect of the sea- 
 side for bathing, or the change that now obtained ? 
 
 Persons of either sex living far from the sea deemed it 
 necessary to rush to the coast so soon as the fine weather 
 had set in. Like the anadromous "fishes, a furious desire to 
 migrate seized upon them, and they obeyed the instinctive 
 call. Opinion will be found to have set going this move- 
 ment. The same moving power has been active on sub- 
 sequent occasions. Medical practice assumes the mania of 
 fashion, and its votaries obey the call. How many forms of 
 fashionable practice have seriously occupied the attention 
 of society, particularly of the easy classes ; but none can, 
 it is to be believed, equal the monster movement of the 
 era under consideration. 
 
 Man delights to trace great results to certain causes, 
 and to prove them to be the clear emanation of one mind. 
 Shall injustice be imputed if Dr. Richard Russel be set 
 down as the great instigator of the sea-side mania? 
 
 This physician was the son of a London bookseller. 
 His acquirements were great, and a great name was the 
 consequence. In 1750 he published in Latin his well- 
 
 NN 2 
 
548 SOCIAL HISTOEY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 known '■' Treatise upon Glandular Consumption, and the 
 Use of Sea Water in Diseases of the Glands." This produced 
 a great effect upon the medical faculty; and in 1753 an 
 English translation was sent forth, which increased his fame 
 and the number of his patients. His course of treatment 
 led him, as might reasonably be supposed, to the coast. He 
 chose Brijjhton for his residence. 
 
 Sea water became the panacea for every ailment. Phy- 
 sicians talked of the sea; descanted upon the number of 
 dips, the hour for immersion ; the number of times a-week, 
 the particular locality, and the relative strength or saltness 
 of the water. Determination to the sea-side was set up. 
 
 Should we say of Dr. Eussel that he caused Brighton 
 alone to rise, — that metropolis of the sea coast ? The fame 
 of his practice led other medical men to raise the cry, " to 
 the sea-side." Lodging-houses began to be created in a 
 very great number of localities, as at Brighton. Dr. Russel 
 was to sea-side visitors what Peter the Hermit was to the 
 crusades — the instigator, the genius that raised the latent 
 spirit. 
 
 This physician, who produced such great results, died in 
 London when on a visit, in 1759, aged seventy-two, and 
 lies interred at South Mailing : — 
 
 Clara per omne Eevuni Russelli fama manebit, 
 Dum retinet vires unda marina suas.* 
 
 The rush to the coast to procure the benefit arising from 
 the virtues of Sea Water must be distinguished from the 
 subsequent movement to the coast to secure the cura- 
 tive effects of the balmy Sea Air. This was a later 
 movement. The first rush was of those who came to bathe 
 in sea water ; the second, of those who desired to breathe 
 sea air. 
 
 Medicinal waters became the rage about the close of the 
 eighteenth century. A new chalybeate, or indeed any 
 mineral spring, occasioned a rush of invalids to drink and 
 
 * See Horsfield's Sussex. 
 
MINERAL SPRINGS. — PHYSICIANS. 549 
 
 partake of its healing qualities. This fashion for mineral 
 springs prevailed extensively. A spring discovered at 
 Glastonbury brought in one year 10,000 persons ; but the 
 fame was not sustained, and the bath or fountain is only an 
 object of curiosity. A spring with some ordinary chaly- 
 beate properties in the park of Hinton St. George, the seat 
 of Earl Pculett, counted a numerous company every morn- 
 ing of neighbouring invalids. Ferruginous, sulphureous 
 properties of particular springs or wells were cried up by 
 certain doctors of physic, and were specially patronised, 
 while others were correspondingly depreciated in Charles 
 the First's reign. Physicians could not make roads; so 
 many of these, perhaps as efficacious as " the Wells " of 
 Tunbridge, remain without repute from having been in- 
 accessible, and when they were so the mania had died 
 away. 
 
 When the latter practice obtained, it was a matter of 
 course, when a patient showed symptoms of tubercular con- 
 sumption, to prescribe a sojourn in Italy or the south of 
 France. Italy was unsuspected of cold or frost, though 
 guilty of both, and having houses not comfortable like our 
 own for invalids. At length some physicians bethought them- 
 selves of the south-west of England. In a medical sense 
 it became fashionable, and began to compete effectually with 
 the Isle of Wight. A member of Oriel College thus 
 warmly eulogises the south-west of England : — 
 
 " Mild is the clime, though sullen winter reign, 
 Though frost, with iron grasp, extend his chain ; 
 Some secret charm soon bursts the crystal band, 
 And strikes the sceptre from his livid hand. 
 The piercing winds, whose ice-flaked tempest blows 
 From hills deep buried in a waste of snows, 
 Soon as they touch this bland, enchanted ground. 
 Confess the spell, and feel their rigours bound." 
 
 Some towns were especially marked out and lauded by 
 physicians for their curative influence in cases of consump- 
 tion. This was so in a remarkable degree with Sidmouth, 
 
 N N 3 
 
550^ SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 when Torquay, Bournemouth, &c., did not exist as towns, 
 or even as villages. There were by the quay at Tor three 
 cottages, which many old persons remembered as the first 
 signs of that large watering-place and winter residence. 
 Hyde had only a few fishermen's houses. Brighton was a 
 small place. Weston super Mare, Clevedon, Burnham, 
 Teignmouth, Budleigh, Salterton, Bournemouth, Dawlish, 
 Bagnor, Worthing, &c., either did not exist, or were insigni- 
 ficant villages. 
 
 During the summer months a few invalids occasionally 
 came to enjoy the sea air at Lyme from Bath, Bristol, and 
 Somersetshire ; but as machines were unknown, any one 
 wishing to court the embraces of Neptune was obliged to 
 undress on the beach : the accommodations in other respects 
 were equally bad. Till after the construction of the turn- 
 pike road from Charmouth through Lyme to Exeter, in 
 1758, strangers in their journey westward had no oppor- 
 tunity of viewing it. The innkeeper first procured a bathing- 
 machine for the accommodation of travellers, who were 
 enabled to take a dip in a comfortable manner, before pro- 
 ceeding on their journey. It is a curious fact that he placed 
 it at the mouth of the river, where it remained for several 
 years. Many a lovely creature, whose tender frame was 
 shaken by an insidious malady beyond hope of cure, 
 shivered at each plunge ; and those in robust health were 
 daily seen in numbers playing mermaids and tritons. Nearly 
 every visitor of the coast was a bather ; now comparatively few 
 take the cold bath, excepting as a luxury. The warm baths 
 are in greater request. May-day saw the first immersion ; 
 now bathing begins later, and late autumn bathing has its 
 admirers. 
 
 A gentleman of Bath, being sent to Weymouth to bathe, 
 had a machine constructed. These conveniences are now 
 universally made use of. While referring to Weymouth, 
 it may be remarked that royalty partook of the coast-ward 
 movement. King George III. and court visited Weymouth 
 for the first time in 1789, when in the annals of that town 
 commences a memorable era known as "the king days." 
 
"WATERING-PLACES." 551 
 
 Much had to be done before the decayed towns could be 
 made to shake off, serpent-like, their old skin, and assume 
 their new character or metamorphose ^ that of Wateeihg- 
 Places. The demand was steady and marked ; that an 
 adequate supply followed we need not feel surprised at. 
 
 Housekeepers near the sea began to fit up two or three 
 front rooms in a homely manner, which is the first indication 
 at Lyme of the lodging-house system, now so generally pur- 
 sued on the whole line of coast : they met with encourage- 
 ment ; others were procured, and it soon happened, as it is 
 somewhere expressed, that the invalids who came in search 
 of health "found the goddess propitious to their prayers, 
 and returning to pay their vows, brought beauty and ele- 
 gance " in their train. Houses devoted to the reception of 
 visitors were not at first to be procured. The old ruinous 
 towns required much preparation. Lyme had rows of crum- 
 bling falling houses, narrow drang ways* leading to the 
 weaving shops, where pack-horses could be led to be loaded. 
 Cottages were so miserable that without their being pulled 
 down nothing could be done to make the town a fitting 
 place of reception for summer visitors. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Hollis, a gentleman of well-known repute, 
 mentioned at one time as the probable writer of the letters 
 of " Junius," who travelled abroad in company with Thomas 
 Brand, Esq., of the Hyde, Essex, became possessed of lands 
 at Corscomb in Dorsetshire. 
 
 This gentleman had purchased the Three Cups Inn, where 
 he retained apartments for himself, called " Liberty Hall." 
 He purchased a whole row of poor houses in Pound Street, 
 and pulled them down for the improvement of the town. 
 His influence in the metamorphose of Lyme Regis was 
 generally acknowledged. The great Lord Chatham's visits 
 to that town were ascribed by the scandal mongers to his 
 desire to ingratiate himself with the bachelor Mr. Hollis. 
 Toplady, the Calvinistic writer, believed that the Earl hoped 
 this gentleman would have proved a second Sir William 
 Pinsent, who had left his lordship a large estate. Mr, Hollis 
 
 * Anglo-Saxon dringen, " to press ;" a very narrow passage or alley. 
 
 N N 4 
 
552 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHEKN COUNTIES. 
 
 died in 1774, and was buried, at his request, in the middle 
 of a field in a grave ten feet deep, when ploughs were set to 
 work immediately that no traces of his burial-place might 
 remain. 
 
 In the summer months an agreeable society was formed. 
 The visitors and respectable inhabitants occasionally met at 
 six o'clock to dance in the alcove on the square, now forming 
 a part of the walk. The front was glazed. The whole ex- 
 tent of window was lined with spectators, who took their 
 station to " gaze on the fair " and see the strangers. 
 
 Families of good fortune regularly came for the season, 
 and many of the first visitors built houses near the sea, in 
 spots which till then had been entirely neglected. In the 
 course of a few years great changes took place. There were 
 two prices for articles, one for inhabitants, another for visit- 
 ors. Persons of county family put a sum of money into their 
 trunk, and went to the sea to spend it. Some " land sharks " 
 followed ; and amusing adventures might be recorded. Some 
 persons in business, keepers of hotels, libraries, and assembly 
 rooms, made themselves particularly useful to the strangers. 
 Possessed of tact, a few attained a pitch of influence that 
 caused them to be privileged persons, while their senses 
 directed them to use with judgment and efifect the advan- 
 tages of their position — a novel one to themselves and their 
 fellow-townsmen. Houses began to be wholly appropriated 
 to strangers, though none of those pretty cottages which 
 now grace the environs had been erected, and few buUdings 
 in a more elevated situation were in existence. A boarding 
 house was opened. The terms for board and lodging were 
 10s. 6c?. per week. Butter was then 3d. a lb. ; beef, 4c?. ; a 
 large loaf, 4Jc?. 
 
 Mr. lloUis had paved the way for the building of the As- 
 sembly Rooms. 
 
 This may appear to involve only the outlay of a sum of 
 money ; but the effect upon the town at large was deeply felt. 
 
 Nearly all the townspeople were Dissenters, and eighty 
 years since that class entertained very strong opinions against 
 cards and dancing. Mr. James Bagster, the builder, a Dis- 
 
DANCING IN THE ASSEMBLY ROOMS. 553 
 
 senter, having contracted to build the ball-room, ran home to 
 be the first to announce to his wife that he was going to 
 build Satan's house ; but he added a saving clause, — " I shall 
 get a hundred pounds by it." 
 
 The Assembly Rooms were the great source of delight. 
 Persons penned up in uncomfortable lodgings spent the 
 evening regularly twice a week in society, played at cards, 
 and on Fridays danced. Many took their tea and coiFee 
 there every night, for which the charge was only 6d. 
 
 The principal inhabitants anticipated the coming interfe- 
 rence with their habits, having been already waited upon by 
 the minister of the great chapel, and one and all left and 
 became churchmen. 
 
 The season began in May, and ended in October. For 
 many years there were no strangers in the winter. In the 
 course of time, fifty houses in the suburbs having been erected, 
 some of the visitors became residents. 
 
 Of these some were county families whose object was to 
 save ; many were ofiicers on half pay, and individuals pos- 
 sessed of a fair income. The first visitors had to rough it to 
 a certain extent. The people of the little towns were not 
 accustomed to gentry, and had not learnt to suit their habits 
 to the new comers. The grandmother of a baronet lodged 
 by the sea at a village in Dorset, at a homely cottage. She 
 told me that from her bed-room window appeared one 
 morning an object which at first puzzled her. This was a 
 horse's carcase which had been hauled up to the top of a 
 boat's mast by one leg and flayed. This was allowed to hang 
 there for the convenience of the fishermen coming to cut off 
 pieces for bait for their lobster pots and shrimp nets. What 
 would please the strangers in some towns afterwards became 
 quite a study ; in others was comparatively neglected. 
 
 A boarding-house life was deemed to be very agreeable, 
 and so many had recourse to it that well-frequented houses 
 were to be found everywhere. The English at one time bid 
 fair to emulate the Americans, who are stimulated by neces- 
 sities, and, guided by taste, a boarding-house people. After a 
 certain experience our countrymen appear to have preferred 
 
554 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 the privacy of lodgings to the public life of a boarding-table 
 and association. Such establishments to be found in many 
 towns for several years are now given up, not being found to 
 answer. Reading does not thrive in public establishments. 
 They did for summer visiting, but each family prefers their 
 o-wnmenac/e — their own "Hcmie." The fact is now established 
 that the British are essentially a domestic — a home-loving 
 people. 
 
 At the Boarding House kept by Mrs. Peckett the com- 
 pany found their own tea and sugar. Each boarder had his 
 tea-caddy ; hence the great number who took their coffee 
 and tea at the " Assembly Rooms." There was no expense 
 ill this enjoyment of an evening in society and a meal. 
 
 The class that moved to the sea-side had, for its marking 
 character, gentle breeding. Officers of both services, and 
 persons of good family, had been bred in habits of self- 
 restraint and self-respect. 
 
 This new importation brought a high standard of manners 
 and habits. A decree went out virtually against the com- 
 mon public room or bar of the inn — a very general place of 
 resort in many, if not most towns. 
 
 Pride has been charged upon the new comers, and that of 
 being exclusive. In many towns the highest, and many 
 grades below in the scale, associated at the bar, the fives- 
 court, the belfry, and at cock-fights, and badger-baitings. 
 Persons admitted to the new circle gave up the mixed society 
 of such places, and associated only with "presentable people." 
 The effect of this alone upon the social system was very 
 great. The inhabitants of some country towns viewed the 
 operation of this in neighbouring places with great ill-will — 
 nevertheless the separation has continued. 
 
 The strangers who came knew nothing of the old natives 
 of the place, moving in humble life ; they formed an entirely 
 new class. The inhabitants, who had no connection with 
 them, did not like them. " When they strangers comed," 
 said an old woman upwards of ninety, " then the town was 
 a-spoiled." There was a familiarity amongst the townspeople, 
 engendered by a long residence in the same place, which 
 
THE mayor's feast. HOSPITALITY. 555 
 
 ought not to have been expected to be shared with new 
 comers. The habits of a country town were not in accord- 
 ance with those of persons of good income. 
 
 The dinner hour at the mayor's feast was two o'clock. 
 The viands were plain, but substantial : pipes and punch 
 were introduced immediately after the cloth was removed. 
 Most of the company departed about midnight. The hos- 
 pitality of this period is described in a number of the " Edin- 
 burgh Review : " a gentleman is spoken of as returning late 
 over bad roads ; footman drunk, coachman more drunk, 
 master most drunk ! The ringers and singers spent Christ- 
 mas eve at the clergyman's house with the vicar. The 
 sisters and friends of some of the most respectable inhabitants 
 had stalls in the shambles at the fair ; and the young ladies 
 " of the best of the town " raffled there for ribbons. 
 
 Among the motives for so many choosing a sea-coast 
 residence may be mentioned : — 1. Sea-bathing. 2. Curative 
 influence of climate in consumption and ill-health. 3. A 
 circle of visiting in society. 4. Economy. 5. A compliance 
 with the fashion of the time, — the Continent beinff closed 
 against the British. 6. Fortune-hunting and match-making- 
 
 The polished strangers gave the ton to the principal 
 townspeople, who soon became more refined in their manners, 
 and stylish in their mode of living. Card-jDlaying, — prin- 
 cipally whist and loo, — was the rage. Circulating libraries 
 contained scarce anything but novels. To purchase books 
 was not customary ; there were none offered for sale, but 
 could be procured by an order through the proprietor of the 
 " Sherborne Mercury " newspaper. Company assembled at 
 seven, and retired at eleven, — only a little later than the 
 present hour for commencing the first quadrille. 
 
 Weymouth, like Brighton when royalty was present, be- 
 came crowded, and extremely gay and expensive. Persons 
 of high distinction put up with lodgings that, in spite of the 
 charge per week, were very mean. Many new watering- 
 places sprang into note, where no good houses had ever been 
 erected. The supply was not greater than the demand till 
 the peace of 1815, when the Continent drew away numbers 
 
556 SOCIAL HISTOEY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 which some towns felt, and have ever since been in a state of 
 vegetation merely, or positive decline. Before the French 
 Kevolutlon of 1830, there were 150,000 English residing in 
 France ; soon after that political event the numbers were 
 reduced to 75,000. 
 
 Hustioity of manners, confined views of men and things, 
 yielded to intercourse with persons who had travelled, and 
 inspired some desire -for seeing the world into the inhabitants 
 of the country town. 
 
 It is highly entertaining to listen to octogenarians who 
 have spent their life in some town by the sea-side. They 
 give an interesting account of the first visitors to the coast, 
 of a race of perambulators that, swallow-like, set out in 
 settled weather, to enjoy the sea-breezes, and ramble along 
 the shore, till, fatigued with their toilsome and rough walk 
 over the pebbles and ledges, they returned to recruit their 
 strength, and arrange specimens of sea-weed and shells in 
 the homely parlour of some sea-faring man, whose thrifty 
 wife added to his little gain by letting out three rooms to 
 " summer visitors." Persons who came in halcyon days 
 expected little more than cleanliness and attention. Much 
 taste was displayed in the arrangement of shells, pebbles, and 
 sea-weed, — much energy in the search after them. In every 
 sitting-room might be seen some tasteful and fantastic nick- 
 nack of the marine school, a pebble painted to represent the 
 head of a Chinese, with a polished limpet shell for a hat — 
 baskets made of shells, containing different kinds of sea- 
 weed, and all such trifles, which ladies of great taste so well 
 know how to arrange. 
 
 The following lines appeared under a bouquet of sea-weed, 
 in an album, and were written by a lady, long a resident 
 of Lyme : — 
 
 " Oh call us not weeds, but flowers of the sea, 
 For lovely, and gay, and bright-tinted are we ; 
 Our blush is as deep as the rose of thy bowers. 
 Then call us not weeds, — -we are ocean's gay flow'rs. 
 
NATURAL CURIOSITIES. — TOSSILS. 557 
 
 Not nurs'd like the plants of the summer parterre, 
 
 Whose gales are but sighs of an evening air ; 
 
 Our exquisite, fragile, and delicate forms 
 
 Are the prey of the ocean when vex'd with his storms. " 
 
 About the time that watering-places arose out of the old 
 towns, fossils, called curiosities, became an object that attracted 
 the visitors. One Lock, whom Dr. Maton calls curi-man, 
 used to offer to the coach passengers at Charmouth specimens 
 of verterherries, mushrooms, ladies' fingers, John Dories, and 
 cornumoniuses. Richard Anning sold similar objects at 
 Lyme, having learnt how to find such things by accompany- 
 ing a Mr. South, who is believed to have been employed by 
 the Duchess of Portland. 
 
 From this beginning, Mary Anning, his famous daughter, 
 proceeded to great discoveries, and geology became esta- 
 blished as a science. The celebrated Dr. William Buck- 
 land, Dean of Westminster, was born at Axminster, and the 
 late Sir Henry De la Beche became a resident at Lyme. 
 
 The time of heroic geology abounded with great men, as 
 did that of the Argonauts. The discovery of the Ichthyo- 
 saurus, the Plesiosaurus, and other wonderful remains, gave 
 dignity to the science. 
 
 The exhibition of pretty sea-side objects, — a fairy purse, 
 an ammonite, or belemnite, with sparkling nodules of iron 
 pyrites coming under the denomination of curiosities, — was 
 deemed to be harmless ; but fossils, properly so called, led 
 to questions respecting the Mosaic account of the Creation. 
 Fossilisers, in later years called geologists, — those who 
 found fossils, and talked about what creatures they had once 
 been, — were almost universally viewed in a bad light, as 
 infidels and perverters of the Scripture. Every pheno- 
 menon visible on the earth's surface, or at the greatest depth 
 to which man has descended, every vestige of early creation, 
 each example of stratification or deposit, all fossil remains of 
 lizard, fish, or mammal, were set down to the Deluge. 
 Persons of an infidel turn of mind used openly to speak of 
 
558 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 those who came to seek after fossils as being of their own 
 stamp. The clergy denounced the philosophers. 
 
 Can any such an episode in the history of our coast be 
 ever gone over again ? Certainly not. The Continent may 
 return its self-banished and ever-crumbling British, who 
 have helped to raise prices nearly to an equality with those 
 of our own country. In that case how many large towns of 
 recent origin or recent extension are ready to receive them, 
 — towns which did not exist or were not revived in the 
 last century ? Supposing this to happen, there would be only 
 a repetition, but no novelty. The founding new watering- 
 places and revival of old towns under a new guise — so 
 extensively at least, and so generally — as in the last cen- 
 tury, cannot in all its features be repeated. The effects 
 of such a novelty might be traced through many ramifica- 
 tions with important results, if our subject demanded it. The 
 wide spread of refinement has eminently arisen from the 
 watering-place system. 
 
 How interesting was it to listen to old persons who were 
 among the early visitors in the infancy of watering-places. 
 The gay and novel scenes that charmed their youth were 
 reproduced, and they grew warm in the praise of early 
 visiting, and the gaieties of the sea-side towns. An octo- 
 genarian would break into a lament for the decrease of 
 numbers at the evening assembly, and speak of a revival 
 when numbers should be greater. The truth is, that domestic 
 habits have undergone a change. The mode of life of the 
 first frequenter of our sea-side haunts would be unsuitable 
 to those who live in their own houses, or in those rented 
 by the year. Such persons have their own fireside ; they 
 read and take in a newspaper at home. Many do not play 
 either at whist or at a round game. If they require a game 
 at chess, there is a board at home, and more than all, there is 
 a piano to gratify the lover of music. 
 
 Hours are changed : in a word, society has appeared under 
 a new phase, and while thus constituted, a return to a former 
 state, when the elements were so different, cannot take 
 place. We are irresistibly carried on to experience new 
 
MISCELLANEOUS REMINISCENCES. 559 
 
 results; to return to old combinations, without the old 
 elements is forbidden. New scenes await us in human life. 
 Such is our destiny. 
 
 Watering-places may be divided into two classes: 1., 
 those in which is a circle of visiting, to which presentable 
 people find access; 2., those without any general circle of 
 visiting or society whatever. 
 
 This is an important distinction, and great effects result 
 from the operation of either condition. Certain members 
 of the community generally find the one class of watering- 
 place suited ; the other unsuited to them. Some desire to 
 be private, some are inadmissible. Both these classes choose 
 a town without a circle : to others, visiting and morning 
 calls, added to a sojourn by the sea-side, render the place 
 very desirable. 
 
 This subject might be pursued to some length. 
 
 Miscellaneous Reminiscences. 
 
 Observe those groups of rustics approaching the church- 
 hatch just as the service is beginning. They walk on and 
 enter the porch. Is not this after the good old plan, as 
 their forefathers did before them? Each is guilty of a 
 great omission was the reply : the former generation, as 
 they approached the fabric all sooner or later, were seen 
 to stoop to untie the strings of their knee-breeches, for 
 without having done so, they could not have knelt during 
 the service. This was a necessary preparation for a seemly 
 performance of the form adopted in the act of public worship, 
 and a manifestation of their readiness to be reverential and 
 observant of the duly-prescribed attitude. 
 
 During the service those who carried round the plate for 
 subscriptions to a charity punctiliously avoided handino- it 
 to a lady. What is not gained now-a-day by a departure 
 
560 SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES. 
 
 from this partial presentation of the plate ? Still, oh ye 
 praisers of the past, was he not an innovator ? and what 
 new evil did not the novelty introduce or occasion ? 
 
 Seventy years ago our countrymen had to endure the 
 pelting of the pitiless storm, whether this was considered to 
 be an evil or not, for there was no umbrella in use. Tom 
 Coryat spoke well of this implement a century and a half 
 before its introduction into this country. Continental na- 
 tions used the umbrella, and Jonas Hanway, the philan- 
 thropist, dared ridicule by publicly carrying one. In many 
 country towns the introduction of the first umbrella was 
 long remembered : the occasion was a memorable one. Many 
 never would shelter themselves under so coxcombical, so 
 unmanly a novelty, but streamed with rain, to the injury 
 of their health, as they were accustomed of old. All now 
 embrace an opportunity of sheltering themselves under 
 what the croakers prognosticated a hurtful thing, which 
 would stop the circulation of air through the streets. Dr. 
 Jamieson first used an umbrella in Glasgow in 1782. Sang- 
 ster has made an interesting little book upon the history of 
 this article. 
 
 Forty years ago, when daylight was about to be succeeded 
 by darkness, on occasions of any alarm or expected danger 
 the first care of housewives was to look well to their flint 
 and steel, so as to have the means of striking light readily 
 if wanted in the night season. Xow Lucifer matches, and 
 various contrivances for producing instantaneous light, have 
 superseded the flint and steel. The trampers' occupation 
 at the " lodging house " in making matches, by cutting up 
 deal wood and dipping the thin slips in brimstone, is gone. 
 The beggar's appeal began with, " Please to buy a penny'th 
 of matches." 
 
 ^A'ho now hears mention made of a Double Horse — a 
 strong, steady animal, with a pillion behind the saddle for 
 ladies ? 
 
 Tipping stocks and horse blocks were necessary when 
 double horses were in use. 
 
 Etiquette required, so late as the year 1773, that fashion 
 
POACHERS. — OLD CUSTOMS. 561 
 
 ables should put on a new pair of gloves at every new 
 dance. This made it convenient to have a table covered 
 with gloves for sale in a ball-room. See what Burke says 
 in his " Anecdotes of the Aristocracy " respecting W. 
 M'Clellan, Lord Kircudbright, 
 
 The inclosure and cultivation of the Black Down range 
 of hills, on the greensand formation of the geologist, 
 causes the dark fruit, the Whortleberry ( Vaccinium) to be 
 brought about in less abundance than formerly. The fruit 
 is now used for dyeing in the north of England. During 
 the Whort-season children used to assemble to partake of 
 Whort-pies made by the landlord of the Black Dog public 
 house, Uplyme. Whort-pies made with a brown crust, and 
 eaten with clouted cream, are a west country delicacy. Pies, 
 pilchard, and various other kinds, are almost a characteristic 
 of Cornwall. 
 
 Poachers always abounded. Severe laws were framed 
 against them by kings and nobles ; bishops excommunicated 
 them by the greater excommunication by bell, book, and 
 candle. 
 
 Setting dogs, for the taking partridges with nets, were 
 cried down by proclamation in 1634, as that game was 
 nearly destroyed. Our ancestors eat game at all seasons of 
 the year. 
 
 When persons visited remarkable spots, such as the leads 
 of great buildings, they followed an absurd custom of leav- 
 ing an imprint of their foot there. Great men were, like 
 the Duke of Buckingham at King's College Chapel, Cam- 
 bridge, solicited to leave an imprint behind them. 
 
 When heralds went round the country boroughs in the 
 reign of James I., they required corporations to show their 
 charters and liberties. These and both seals were to be 
 shown to the heralds at Wells, August 23rd, 1622, and 40«. 
 to be paid to them.* 
 
 Great coats are no longer necessary for great numbers of 
 persons, not that the seasons are less severe, but that per- 
 
 * Corporate Records of Wells City. Notes and Queries, No. 584. 
 
 O O 
 
562 SOCIAL HISTOET OP THE 80UTHEKN COUNTIES. 
 
 sons travel by rail under cover. Whole factories are closed 
 in the west that made double milled or great coat cloth. 
 
 The Roman amphitheatre Mambury, near the railway 
 station at Dorchester, was the scene of a dreadful execution, 
 March 21. 1705. 
 
 A person named Channing had murdered her husband ; 
 for which she was, according to her sentence, burnt in the 
 middle of the area, having been first strangled. It has been 
 said that 10,000 persons were present, like the ancient Ro- 
 mans seated round the slope of the earthwork. 
 
 Tradition reports that a woman named Hall was burnt 
 there Dec. 31. 1660.* 
 
 Long £axen hair was bought from the head at 10«. the 
 ounce, and any other fine hair at 5s. or 7s. the ounce in 
 1662. 
 
 Within the present century the heads of hair of whole 
 families in Devonshire were let out by the year at so much 
 rent per poll. An Exeter perriwig maker went round peri- 
 odically, cut the locks, and oiled the numskull of each thus 
 left in stubble. 
 
 Rook shooting is, in the southern counties, followed by 
 rook pie, which is esteemed as a delicacy. In some parts of 
 England the rook is looked upon much as the Germans call 
 it, " the crow with the white bill ;" and who would eat a 
 "carrion crow?" 
 
 A north country judge having, at a southern assize, heard 
 several witnesses speak to a conversation at table, where the 
 principal party, an old man, partook of rook-pie, which was 
 intended to be conclusive as to the season of the year, he 
 conceived that this pie was improper and unusual food given 
 to the old person by way of sport. The learned judge, in 
 his address to the jury, commented, in warm terms, upon 
 the disgusting food that had been set before the old man ; 
 and was surprised at being informed that rook pie, composed 
 of the wings, legs, and breast, with a beefsteak at the bottom 
 
 * See Hutchins's Dorset. 
 
DELICACIES. — POULTRY MANIA. 563 
 
 of the dish, was partaken of with great delight in the south 
 of England as a delicacy of the month of May. 
 
 Apropos of delicacies, the wardon pie was not filled with 
 venison, as is so often said, but with wardon pears. 
 
 Those infected with the poultry mania wiU be interested 
 in learning that ducks used to be marked as swans now are. 
 A man was presented at Seaford, by a jury, for marking 
 three ducks with his own mark and cutting out the owner's 
 marks.* 
 
 The comparative profit of employing horses or oxen in 
 agriculture has been the subject of discussion of late years, 
 though now settled in favour of the former. The Cistercian 
 monks were large farmers. In the reign of Henry III. 
 A. D. 1216, about fifteen times as many oxen were kept 
 for ploughing as there were of horses. 
 
 Peat grew where there is now some of the best land. 
 
 There were tide miUs when Doomsday-book was com- 
 piled. Windmills were first mentioned by Joceline de 
 Brakelonde in his Chronicle, about the year 1190. Fulling 
 mills were erected about the 14th century. 
 
 "We have alluded to insurance, the provident union of the 
 many to provide against a casualty falling upon one of their 
 number, which is a proof of society having greatly ad- 
 vanced. 
 
 The first life assurance company was established by the 
 Mercers' Company in 1698. 
 
 * 25 Eliz. 
 
INDEX. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 Album, 392. 
 
 Ale, a feast, as church ale, &c., 327. 
 
 Anning, Mary, 557. 
 
 Apprentices, rules respecting, 185 ; 
 eating salmon, 186. 
 
 Architecture, domestic, materials, 
 &c., 296. 
 
 Argentine, Golden, 202. 
 
 Arms, the -wearing, 408 ; bloodsheds, 
 409; aiding the mayor, 410; fight- 
 ing in church, 411; murder through 
 want of clubs, 412 ; the Mohocks, 
 413. 
 
 Arming of towns, 100. 
 
 Armour, price of, 112 ; mixed, 114. 
 
 Attorneys, regulating the number, 
 148 ; expulsion of some, orders, 
 149. 
 
 B. 
 
 Barrow (Seaton), 117. 
 
 Bathing, first, machines, 550. 
 
 Bathing punished, 165. 
 
 Beacons, 108. 
 
 Bedford, Earl, his visits, 82. 
 
 Beer, curious local orders, laws, &c., 
 450 ; ale-stake, prices, beer-house, 
 brew -house, exportation of beer, 
 455 ; stoning pots broken, 457 ; de- 
 finition of drunkenness, 459 ; tip- 
 plers' five laws, 461 ; beer laws 
 obsolete, 461. 
 
 Beverage, several kinds of, 429 ; su- 
 periority of one liquor, ale and 
 beer, 433 ; toasts, 434 ; foolish 
 Dorset; cider, 435 ; history of, 436 ; 
 orchard, 438, &c. ; introduction of 
 cider into boroughs, 440 ; first 
 mention of cider in boroughs, 442 ; 
 
 quantity, tax upon, loyalty, 444 ; 
 Lord North's fright, 445 ; spirits, 
 rum, 446 ; dram drinking, 446 ; 
 coffee drink, powder, 447 ; tea, 448. 
 
 Board and education of young per- 
 sons, 399 ; frauds, employment, 
 399 ; a young girl placed out, 399 ; 
 Winchester school, 400 ; cock- 
 fights, 400. ; charges, 401 ; firing, 
 402 ; anecdotes and changes, 406 ; 
 young lady's school charges, 406 ; 
 music, and the " Battle of Prague," 
 408. 
 
 Board of pupils scanty, 399. 
 
 Boarding-house life, 553. 
 
 Boat, a town, 322. 
 
 Bocca Negra, 71. 
 
 Books, chained, 398 ; price of print- 
 ing, 398. 
 
 Bookbinder, 398. 
 
 Bottles, 431. 
 
 Bounds, beating the, 229. 
 
 Bowling, 120; greens, 423. 
 
 Bows and arrows, 100, &c. 
 
 Branks, 158. 
 
 Bread, regulations for the baking of, 
 449 ; several kinds of bread, 450. 
 
 Bribery, 3, 5. 
 
 Breeching boy, 403. 
 
 Bumping boys, 399. 
 
 Burgesses of the Parliament, the pay- 
 ment of, 468 ; EUesdon's bill, 471 ; 
 bargaining to represent a borough, 
 472 ; first bribery, ignorant bur- 
 gess, 474 ; trickery, 475 ; sun- 
 dry particulars, travelling charges, 
 &c., 477. 
 
 C. 
 
 Cabbage, 21. 
 Cannon, 102. 
 
 Cannynge, 47. 
 
568 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Carpets, 545. 
 
 Censorship recommended, 188. 
 
 Chained books, 398. 
 
 Chimneys, 297. 325, 326. 
 
 Church instruments, boolcs, Sec, 224. 
 
 Churchwardens' Latin, 395. 
 
 Cider, tax, &c., 436. 
 
 Civil engineering, early, 302 ; weigh- 
 ing rocks, Huderesfield, 303. 
 
 Clergy coerced by the magistrates, 
 145. 
 
 Clothing trade in the West, 364 ; 
 names of the articles, colours, 366; 
 clothiers go to town, 367 ; cost of 
 a private gentleman's cloth, 369 ; 
 plan for a Drapery Hall, 369. 
 
 Coal, its introduction, 346 ; opinions 
 respecting it, 348 ; wood in use in 
 the Weald, 349; terms used, 350; 
 Lord Dudley's works for smelting, 
 352 ; forests, introduction of sea- 
 coal, 353 ; price of wood, &c,, 
 355 ; wood stealing, laws, 357. 
 
 Cobb ale, a great feast, 327 ; several 
 ales; drinkings; like bazaars, 328 ; 
 costs of apparatus, 329 ; church 
 ale at Tarring, and cost, 330 ; Lord 
 and Lady of, 331 ; Stubbe's ac- 
 count, 332 ; joy at the coming of 
 summer, 334 ; lottery for harbours, 
 
 335 ; a whistle and silver chain, 
 
 336 ; a bass horn, Cobb hall and 
 Cobb kitchen, 337 ; begging and 
 expenses, 339 ; spoons and forks, 
 341 ; Puritans and quarrels about 
 the ale, 344. 
 
 Cock-fighting in schools, 400, 421 ; 
 church bells ring, 421. 
 
 Cock squalling, 421, 422 ; cock 
 pence, staffed cock for children, 
 422. 
 
 Coffee, 27. 
 
 Columbus and brother, 77. 
 
 Considerable man, 194. 
 
 Counties, neighbouring, restricted in 
 their intercourse, 146 ; grain and 
 butter must not be sent out of the 
 producing county, 148 
 
 Convenience, few articles of, 316. 
 
 Courting restricted, 166. 
 
 Cranes gone, 199. 
 
 Crewkerne. Mr. J., acts for the bo- 
 roughs about pirates, 96. 
 
 Cricket, 119. 
 
 Cucking-stooi, 150 ; hashed meat, 
 158. 
 
 Cursing, 166. 
 
 Dancing, an abbe preaches against, 
 227. 
 
 Dissenters play cards ; the conse- 
 quences, 552, 553. 
 
 Drinking when transacting business, 
 448. 
 
 Drunkard's cloak, 165. 
 
 Earthworks, British thoughts of for- 
 tifying, 56. 
 Education and board, 398. 
 
 F. 
 
 Fire, security against, 358 ; a mantel, 
 359 ; thatch, 361 ; office, 363 ; en- 
 gine, 364. 
 
 Fish diet, license to eat meat, 250 ; 
 suppers on Fridays, 253 ; license to 
 eat meat, 254; price offish, 255. 
 
 Footpaths, the stopping up, 461 ; early 
 practice of this, 462 ; Sir Thomas 
 Brooke's widow obstructs, 463 ; 
 an Abbot's award, 464; many cases, 
 466. 
 
 Fort, an estimate for one, 85. 
 
 Fossyn, Eliz., her will, 318. 
 
 Fossilist, the first, 557. 
 
 Fruit trees, price of, temp. Charles IL, 
 199. 
 
 Funerals, what time after decease, 
 284. 
 
 G. 
 
 Gambling for meat, 122. 
 
 Games, illegal, 119. 
 
 Gaol, a county, temp. Charles L, 170; 
 
 that of Dorchester, 171 ; orders, 
 
 i71 ; particulars, Mary Blake, 176; 
 
 surgeon excused when gaol fever 
 
 rages, 177 ; sailors retained for fees, 
 
 177. 
 Geneva, collection for, 250. 
 Geology, the era of heroic ; bad light 
 
 in which it was held, 557. 
 Gipsies, 256 ; migration, 257 ; child- 
 
 stealers, 259. 
 Gleaning, abuse of, 189. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 569 
 
 Guns, the town, shooting off, 104 ; 
 
 veneration fov, 105. UG. 
 Gunpowder, 103. 
 
 H. 
 
 Hackney coaches, 489. 
 Hancock, Thomas, memoir, 218. 
 Hanging a vagabond, 169. 
 Hastings, failure in huilding a pier, 
 
 305, 
 Hats and caps, 247. 
 Havens, briefs for, 64. 
 Hay, price of, 196. 
 Hogling money, 225. 
 HoUis, Mr. Thomas, 551. 
 
 Information, collecting it by the 
 Court, 424. 
 
 Intention to commit crime, punished, 
 141. 
 
 Intercourse between counties re- 
 stricted, 146. 
 
 Irish tramps wander about, 187. 
 
 Jago de Compostella, St, pilgrimage 
 to, 127 ; towns and ships, 130 ; 
 state of religion of the pilgrims, 
 134; scallop shell, 134; Marshal 
 Ney's visit, 135 ; pilgrimage as a 
 punishment, 135. 
 
 Judges entertained, and gratuities to 
 them, 3, 4. 
 
 Jurymen solicited, 5. 
 
 K. 
 
 Kidnap, petition to continue, 466. 
 
 Lace trade ; names given to lace, 376 j 
 needles ; origin of lace, 377 ; its 
 introduction, 378 ; scruples about 
 using it, 379 ; changes in lace ; the 
 box of lace, 382. 
 
 Last- dying-speech man, 397. 
 
 Le Blanc's mode of making alkali, 
 kelp, 190. 
 
 Lighthouses, 61. 
 
 Lime-burning with frith, 306. 
 
 Litigious persons punished, 143. 
 
 Lotteries, private, for houses and es- 
 tates, 383 ; the fraud of W. Syden- 
 ham, Esq., 384. 
 
 Lottery for repair of havens, 335 ; for 
 various articles, 385. 
 
 Luxuries, introduction of ; treen plat- 
 ters, pewter, 324. 
 
 M. 
 
 Mantels, 358. 
 
 Magistrates protect and coerce the 
 clergy, 145. 
 
 Marriage, a promise of, falsely 
 charged, punished, 204. 
 
 Marriage, restraint upon, 184. 
 
 Married women wear caps, 248. 
 
 Mayors, importance of, 141. 
 
 Medical practice, 260 ; a mayor's care 
 of the sick ; lechecraft, 262; classes 
 of surgeons, 263 ; midwives im- 
 portant ; cures for certain sums, 
 265 ; Dr. A. Borde, the Merry 
 Andrew, 265 ; Dr. Grey, 266 ; Dr. 
 Case and astrology, 267 ; blood- 
 letting, 268 ; ridding a leper, 269 ; 
 pay of London and country phy- 
 sicians, 270 ; medical rules, 272 ; 
 cool treatment of small-pox, 272 ; 
 scurvy, 272 ; plague-drink sage, tree 
 of truth, silk strings for the scro- 
 fulous, 274 ; cure of hooping cough, 
 275 ; social position of physicians, 
 275. 
 
 Merchant, the term, 50. 
 
 Merry Andrew, 265. 
 
 Ministers, as distinct from preachers, 
 226. 
 
 Mohocks, 413. 496. 
 
 Monks, their pensions, 215. 
 
 Mont St. Michel, pilgrimage to, 129. 
 136. 
 
 Mossing churches, 225 ; mossing halls 
 for feasts, 330. 
 
 Music in our churches, 231 ; singing 
 lads, 231 ; Tusser pressed, 232 ; 
 organs, 233; musical instruments, 
 if a believer can have these, 235 ; 
 old church performers, 236. 
 
 Music little taught, 407 ; the Battle 
 of Prague, 408. 
 
 Murage grants, 101. 
 
 Musters, 110. 115. 
 
 P P 
 
570 
 
 INPEX. 
 
 N. 
 
 Natural pheDomena attributed to su- 
 pernatural causes, 537 ; forebod- 
 ings, &c., 539. 
 
 Navy, tonnage of, 57 ; pay, 59. 
 
 Newspaper, early, 521. 
 
 Nightcaps, distinction in, 418. 
 
 Norris, Sir J., \isits the coast, 17. 
 
 O. 
 
 Oak timber, price of carriage, &c., 
 
 298. 
 Ordeal by toucbing a corpse, 533. 
 Ordnance, introduction of, 102 ; lent 
 
 by the Crown, 116. 
 Olives, 14. 
 Ore or sea-weed, profitable use of, 
 
 303; letting it, laws, &c., 389. 
 Organs or regals, 233 ; pension to a 
 
 player on, a tuner, 234. 
 
 P. 
 
 Paintings, no mention of, 398. 
 
 Partridges, red-legged, 65. 
 
 Paving or pitching the streets, 311 ; 
 cost, 314. 
 
 Pay Harry, 72. 
 
 Pension to the king's secretary, 2. 
 
 Phoenix fire office, 363. 
 
 Pilgrimage to St. Jago de Compos- 
 tella and Mont St. Michel, 127. 
 
 Pillory, 150. 160. 
 
 Pirates, 67 ; rewards for apprehen- 
 sion of, 78; presentments of juries, 
 78 ; Capt. Palmer to command a 
 fleet against them, 81; pirates 
 molest the cod fishermen ; Purser's 
 daring at Weymouth, 84, 85, &c. ; 
 aiders of pirates, 85 ; Sprage's 
 capture, 88 ; capture and commit- 
 tal of, 89 ; vessels of Poole armed, 
 90 ; the gallows of Studland cut 
 down, 90 ; nineteen pirates exe- 
 cuted, 91 ; King James grants money 
 for losses by, 92 ; llton Castle 
 plundered, 92 ; gentlemen turn 
 Turk and become pirates, 93 ; Al- 
 gerines land, 94 ; list of losses by, 
 in 1636, 96, 97. 
 Phigue-stones, 288 ; preservatives 
 
 against, 289 ; the great, 293. 
 Politician punished, 144. 
 
 Post, &c., the early, 506 ; foot-pogt, 
 horse-post, 507 ; innkeepers and 
 tipplers taxed towards the post, 
 508 ; master of the king's posts, 
 "Witherings, 508, 509 ; four lines 
 of posts ; packet-posts, 510 ; tho- 
 rough posts, post for the packet, 
 511 ; running post, travelling post, 
 Jude, 512 ; Parke's and Pymble's 
 quarrel, 513 ; penny post and T. 
 Oates, 514 ; the Weymouth post 
 boy's delay and violence, 515; one 
 lends his horse, and waits for the 
 writing of a letter, 515 ; expense 
 of sending a letter to London, 
 516 ; cost of letters generally, 517 ; 
 charges of letters out of horses, 
 519; newspapers; news-letters, 
 520; earliest provincial newspapers, 
 521 ; marriage announcements, 521; 
 Fleet marriages, 522. 
 
 Poulett, Lord, speech as to a yeoman's 
 earnings, 207. 
 
 Porpoise, a delicacy, 1 1 . 
 
 Presents to great men, 1. 
 
 Preachers, the hiring of, 213; Paul's 
 Cross, 214; hire, 215. 217; T. 
 Hancock, 221 ; scenes caused by, 
 221. 
 
 Preachers, the hiring of, commotions, 
 213. 
 
 Preachers, a running after, 227. 245. 
 
 Preaching ex tempore, 227. 
 
 Presents to great people, 1, &c. 
 
 Price current, 202. 
 
 Prices, 190 ; taxation, 192 ; money, 
 value of, temp. Henry VIIL, 194 ; 
 price of horses and oxen A. D. 1 554, 
 194 ; builders' work, 195 ; hay, 
 A. D 1643, 196; wheat and other 
 com, 197 ; prices in the reign of 
 Charles II., 198 ; fruit trees, 199 ; 
 potatoes, 199; salt, 200. 
 
 Potates, 18. 
 
 Potatoes, price of, first planted, 199. 
 
 Privateers, 99. 
 
 Pretender expected in the West, 427. 
 
 Prosecutors of offenders rewarded, 
 177; list of fees, 178. 
 
 Punishments, borough, 150. 
 
 Purchasing corn of great men, 210. 
 
 Purse given to a judge, 3. 
 
 Pyne, Mr., and Hugh, 24. 
 
 Q. 
 
 Querns, 323. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 571 
 
 Eailer punished, 145. 
 
 Rebellion, reign of Edward VI., 387. 
 
 Read and write, inability to, 390 ; 
 marks, 391 ; chamberlain Murefin 
 discharged, 393 ; Plaistow ; Low 
 Latin, 394; last last-dying- 
 speech man, 397. 
 
 Reception of great men, 31. 
 
 Relieving want, 212. 
 
 Rocks floating with casks, 308. 
 
 Rosmital, Baron, his autograph, 392. 
 
 Running footmen, 493. 
 
 Russel, Dr. Rich, the friend of sea- 
 bathing, 547. 
 
 Sabbath day, observance of, punish- 
 ments for non-observance, 238 ; 
 book of sports, 241 ; children pu- 
 nished for neglect of, 246. 
 
 Salee, how to be treated, 97. 
 
 Salmon pie, 17. 
 
 Sanitary measures, the neglect of, 
 &c., 276 ! dung mixens, 277 ; why 
 objectionable, 278 ; rebels' quarters, 
 281 ; Exeter streets, 281 ; some 
 attend to cleanliness, 283 ; funerals, 
 285. 
 
 Salisbury, a great fish mart, 489. 
 
 Salmon pie, 17. 
 
 Scold, 153. 
 
 Sea or ore-weed, use of, 388 j laws, 
 389. 
 
 Seas more tempestuous, 52. 
 
 Sermons, the reading, 228 ; funeral, 
 the price of, 229. 
 
 Sheepstealer branded, 169. 
 
 Shell-fish, the price of, 25. 
 
 Shipping, early, 45 ; Dromons, Car- 
 racks, &c., 46 ; Cannynge's ships, 
 48; lists of vessels, 51 ; stone shot, 
 52 ; armed coasters, 54 ; the Great 
 Harry, 55 ; a galley, 56 ; first trade 
 to Barbary, 61 ; beacons and light- 
 houses, 61; early brief for a haven, 
 64. 
 
 Shoemakers faulty, 185. 
 
 Sickness, precautions against the 
 spread of, 285 ; shutting up the 
 sick and infected, whipping those 
 who were not obedient, 286 ; mes- 
 sengers sent round to announce 
 
 disease, 287 ; plague declared, 
 people ran away, 288 ; preserva- 
 tives against plague, 289 ; non.' 
 intercourse, 289 ; proof of a house 
 being free from plague, 292. 
 
 Silk-throwing, 383. 
 
 Skimmington riding, 534 ; Sir W. 
 Scott's letter, 536. 
 
 Slaves in a king's ship, 62. 
 
 Smuggling trade, 370; Crowe's poem, 
 371; private cruisers, 372; Gul- 
 liver, 374. 
 
 Soldiers, their bad conduct, 123 ; 
 bribed to avoid a town, 124. 
 
 Soldiers not to command ships, 97. 
 
 Spirits, brandy, rum, punch, 445. 
 
 Spring, joy at the return of, 385 ; 
 firing the guns, 386. 
 
 Stage players, visits of, 35 ; penny 
 benches, smoking, earliest plays, 
 36 ; the puppet-players, 37 ; play- 
 ing in churches, 37 ; players paid 
 to go on without playing, 39 ; sto- 
 ries of divine vengeance against 
 plays, 40 ; a treat for the young 
 priests, 41 ; severities to scenic 
 performers, 42 ; reaction, &c. 
 
 Stocks, 159. 
 
 Stuff, town, list of, 320. 
 
 Sturgeon for the Speaker of the Com- 
 mons, 16. 
 
 Sugar, 11. 18 
 
 Summers', Sir George, talisman, 66. 
 114. 
 
 Sumptuary laws in ancient Rome and 
 iuEngland, 414; Henry VII.'s treat- 
 ment of the Earl of Oxford, 415 ; 
 expense of clothes ; wearing sar- 
 cenet, &c., 416 ; a badge of worldly 
 means, 417; Puritan night-caps, 
 418 ; approved of, 418 ; coming 
 out of an heiress, 420. 
 
 Swearing, 165. 
 
 Sydenham, his fraudulent lottery, 
 384. 
 
 T. 
 
 Talisman, the Summers, 66. 
 
 Tokens, the profit upon, 203. 
 
 Towers, 298. 
 
 Towns, mercantile and coast, the de- 
 cay of, 540. 
 
 Tradesmen in a borough, the propor- 
 tion of the several, 183. 
 
 Travelling, early account of ; manner, 
 cost, &c., 480 ; no hushes to grow 
 
572 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 near roads, 481 ; town and country 
 man, self protection, 482 ; one to 
 teach the way, &c., 483 ; facts ; 
 Keat's joarneys, 484 ; lines for a 
 serving man about to travel, 486; 
 coach and six oxen, 487 ; no wagons 
 allowed, 488 ; wheels of a certaii} 
 breadth, 489 ; hackney coaches, 
 489; anecdotes, journey from Lyme 
 to London, 1684, 490; sundries; 
 the coach shaved, 494 ; the judges' 
 ride, 494 ; Sir Symonds D'Ewes' 
 travels in a coach, 495 ; soap for 
 wheels ; Mohocks, &c., 496 ; high- 
 waymen; length of time of a jour- 
 ney, 497 ; ladies are treated, 498 ; 
 feelings of travellers, 498 ; pillions, 
 upping-stocks ; first post-chaise, 
 499 ; turnpikes ; an old pack- 
 horse driver, 500 ; anecdotes ; ob- 
 jection to roads, 503 ; route to Ire- 
 land ; the basket ; the Quicksilver 
 mail, 504 ; argument against hack- 
 ney coaches and canals, and rail- 
 ways, 505. 
 
 Trawl net, 10. 
 
 Treat, 27. 
 
 Truth, tree of, 274. 
 
 Tumbrel, 150. 
 
 Tusser is pressed as a chorister, 232. 
 
 U. 
 
 Umbrella, 560. 
 
 Under-tenants or incomers, the treat- 
 ment of, 179 ; removal of, 180—185. 
 
 V. 
 Vagrant hanged, 169. 
 Vails to servants, 32 ; rate of, 34. 
 Vermin, book of, 229. 
 
 W. 
 
 Wages, the fixing rates, &c., 205- 
 
 Water, the getting in of, 310 ; pipes 
 and conduits, 313 ; washing linen 
 in, 315 ; abuse of, 315; bringing it 
 into Babylon, 316. 
 
 Watering places, rise of, 546 ; two 
 classes of, 559. 
 
 Weald country, 349. 
 
 Weapons, price of, 105. 
 
 Whipping, 161. 
 
 Wine, account of, 430 ; in antagonism 
 with beer, 432. 
 
 Witchcraft, belief in, 522 ; Bishop 
 Jewell's sermon, 524 ; case of 
 witchcraft to illustrate the belief 
 in the presence of pins, dress, 
 burning the pins. Sec, 525 ; tests 
 to prove a witch, 527 ; present be- 
 lief in witchcraft, 528 ; drawing the 
 witch's blood, 529 ; white witch, 
 or conjuror, 530 ; a seventh son, 
 531 ; sieve and shears, 532. 
 
 Wolf, the last, 481. 
 
 Wolsey, Cardinal, in the stocks, 1 65. 
 
 Women on the stage, 36. 
 
 Wood, scarcity of, 351 ; stealing, 
 laws, 357. 
 
 Wrangler, a, 153. 
 
 Y. 
 
 Yarmouth, feuds with other ports, 
 
 76. 
 Yonge, John, 60. 
 Yvan de Galles, 70. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 London ; 
 
 Printfd by SpoTTisA\oonc ."v' Co , 
 
 Ni'w-srrc.t-Sqiiare. 
 
LIST of WOEKS in GENERAL LITEEATUEE, 
 
 rVBLISHBD BY 
 
 Messrs. LONGMAN, BEOWN, GEEEN, LONG-MANS, and EOBEETS, 
 
 39, PATEBN03TEB BOW, lONHON. 
 
 CLASSIFIED INDEX. 
 
 Apiculture and Rural 
 Affairs. Pas«". 
 
 BaTldoD on Valuing Rents, &c. - 4 
 
 Caird's Letters on Agriculture - 6 
 
 Cecil's Stud Farm . - - 6 
 
 Loudon's Agriculture - - - 13 
 
 Low's Elements of Agriculture 13 
 
 Arts, Manufactures, and 
 Architecture. 
 
 Arnott on YentlUtion - - - 3 
 
 Bourne on the Screw Propeller - 4 
 
 Brande'a Dictionary orScience,&c. 4 
 
 " Organic Chemiatry- - 4 
 
 ChcTreul on Colour . - - 6 
 
 Cresy's Civil Engineering - - 6 
 
 Fuirbairn's Informa. for engineers H 
 
 Gwilt'8 Encj'clo. of Architecture - 8 
 Harford's Engravings after Michael 
 
 Angelo ----- B 
 
 Herring on Paper-Making - - 9 
 
 HumpMcys's Parables Illuminated 10 
 
 Jameson'8Sacred& Legendary Art II 
 
 " Commonplace- Book - II 
 
 Konig'sPictoiial Life of Luther - 8 
 
 Loudon's Rural Architecture - 13 
 
 MacDougall's Theoryof War - 14 
 
 Halan's Aphorisms on Drawing - 14 
 
 Moseley's Engineering - - - 16 
 
 Piease's Art ofPerfumery - - 17 
 
 Richardson's Art of Horsemanship 18 
 
 Scrivenor on the Iron Trade - - 19 
 
 Stark's Printing . - - - 23 
 
 Steam-Engine,by the Artisan Club 4 
 
 Ure's Dictionary of Arts. &c. - 22 
 
 Young on Pra-Raffaellitism - 24 
 
 Biography. 
 
 Arago'a Autobiography - - 23 
 
 " Lives orScientific Men - 3 
 
 Bodenstedt and Wagner's Schamyl 23 
 
 Buckingham's (J. Sn Memoirs - 5 
 
 Bnnsen's Hippolytus - - - 5 
 
 Clinton's (Fynes) Autobiography 6 
 
 Cockayne's Marshal Tureime - 23 
 
 Dennistoun's Strange & Lumisden 7 
 
 Forster's De Foe and Churchill - 23 
 
 Fulcher's Life of Gainsborough - 8 
 
 Harford's Life of Michael Angelo - 8 
 
 Haydon's Autobiography ,by "^ylor 9 
 
 Hayward's' hesterfieldanclSelwyn 23 
 
 Holcroft's Memoirs - - - 23 
 
 Lardner's Cabinet Cycloptedia - 12 
 
 Maunder'sBio^aphical Treasury- 14 
 
 Memoir of the Duke of Wellington 23 
 
 Memoirs of James Montgomery - 15 
 
 Merivale's Memoirs of Cicero - 15 
 
 Rogers's Life and Genius of Fuller 23 
 
 Russell's Memoirs of Moore - - 16 
 
 " Life of Lord Wm.RusseU 19 
 
 St. John's Audubon - - - 19 
 
 Southey'B Life of Wesley - - 20 
 " Life and Correspondence 20 
 
 " Select Correspondence - 20 
 
 Stephen's Ecclesiastical Biography 21 
 
 Sydney Smith's Memoirs - - 20 
 
 Taylor's Loyola - - - - 21 
 
 *' Wesley - - - - 21 
 'WatertoQ's Autobiography & Essays 22 
 
 Wheeler's Life of Herodotus - 24 
 
 Books of General Utility, 
 
 Acton's Bread-Book - - . 3 
 
 " Cookery - - - _ 3 
 
 Black's Treatise on Brewing- - 4 
 
 Cabinet Gazetteer - - - - 5 
 
 ** Lawyer - - - - 5 
 
 Cust's Invalid's Own Book - - 7 
 
 Gilbart'8 Logic for the Million - B 
 
 Hints on Etiquette - - - 9 
 
 How to Nurse Sick Children - - 10 
 
 Uudson'sEzecutor's Guide - - 10 
 
 " on Making "WillB - - 10 
 
 Kesteven's Domestic Medicine - 11 
 
 Lardner's Cabinet Cycloptedia - 12 
 Loudon's Lady's Count^ Compa- 
 nion - - - - - -13 
 
 Maunder's Treasurr ofKnowIedge 15 
 
 *' Biographical Treasury 14 
 
 " Geographical Treasury 15 
 
 " Scientific Treasury - 19 
 
 Maunder'B Treasury of History - 15 
 
 " Natural History - - 15 
 
 Piesie's Art of Perfumery - - 17 
 
 Piscator's Cookery of Fish • - 17 
 
 Pocket and the Stud - - - 9 
 
 Pycroft's English Reading - - 18 
 
 Recce's Medical Guide - - - 18 
 
 Rich's Comp. to Latin Dictionary IB 
 
 Richardson's Art of Horsemanship 18 
 
 Riddle'sLatin Dictionaries • - 18 
 
 Roget's English Thesaurus - - 18 
 
 Rowton'A Debater - - - - 18 
 
 Short Whist ----- 20 
 
 Thomson's Interest Tables - - 21 
 
 Webster's Domestic Economy - 22 
 
 West on Children's Diseases - - 22 
 
 Willich'B Popular Tables - - 24 
 
 Wilmot's Blackstone - - - 24 
 
 Botany and Gardening. 
 
 Hooker's British Flora - - 9 
 " Guide to Kew Gardens - 9 
 " " " Kew Museum - 9 
 Lindley's Introduction to Botany 13 
 " Theory of Horticulture - 12 
 Loudon's Hortus Britannicus - 13 
 " Amateur Gardener - 18 
 " Trees and Shrubs - - 13 
 " Gardening - - - 13 
 " Plants - - - - 13 
 ** Self Instruction for Gar- 
 deners, Sec. - - - - 13 
 Pereira'a Materia Medica - 17 
 Rivera's Rose-Amateur's Guide - 18 
 Wilson's British Mosses - - 24 
 
 Chronology. 
 
 Blair's Chronological Tables - 4 
 
 Brewer's Historical Atlas - - 4 
 
 Bunsen's Ancient Egypt - - 5 
 
 Haydn's Be^tson's Index • - 9 
 
 Jaquemet's Chronology - - 11 
 JohnB& Nicolas'sCalendarofVictoryll 
 
 NicoUs's Chronology of History - 12 
 
 Commerce and Mercantile 
 A£fairs- 
 
 Gilbart'3 Treatise on Banking - 8 
 
 Lorimer's Young Master Mariner 13 
 
 Macleod'a Bankmg - - - 11 
 M'Culloch'sCommerce&NaTigation 14 
 
 Scrivenor on Iron Trade - - 19 
 
 "Thomson's Interest Table* - - 21 
 
 Tooke's History of Pi ices - - 22 
 
 Tuson's BritieliC:;nsul'B Manual • 22 
 
 Criticism, History, and 
 Memoirs. 
 
 Blair's Chron. ana Viator. Tables - 4 
 
 Brewer's Historical Atlas - . - 4 
 
 Bunsen's Ancient Egypt - - S 
 " Hippolytus - - -5 
 
 Burton's History of Scotland - 5 
 
 Chapman's Gustavus Adolphus - 6 
 
 Conybeare and Howson's bt. Paul 6 
 
 Erskine's History of India - - 7 
 
 Gleig's Leifisic Campaign - 23 
 
 Gurney's Historical Sketches - 8 
 Haydon's Autobiography, by Taylor 9 
 
 Jeffrey's (Lord) Contributions - JI 
 Johns & Nicolas'sCalendar of Victory 1 1 
 
 Kemble's Anglo-Saxons - - 11 
 
 Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopsdia - 12 
 
 Macaulay's Crit. and Hist. Essays 13 
 
 " History of England - 13 
 
 " Speeches - - - 13 
 
 Mackintosh's Miscellaneous Works 14 
 
 " Historv of England - 14 
 M'Culloch'sGeographicalDictionary 14 
 
 Maunder's Treasury of History - 15 
 
 Memoir of tlie Duke of Wellington 23 
 
 Merivale's History of Rome - - 15 
 
 " Roman Republic- - 15 
 
 Milner's Church History - *- 15 
 
 Moore's (Thomas) Memoirs^&c. - 16 
 
 Mure's Greek Literature - 16 
 
 Normanby's Year of Revolution - 17 
 
 Raikes'e Journal - - - - 18 
 
 Ranke's Ferdinand & Maximilian 23 
 
 Riddle's Latin Dictionaries ■- - 18 
 
 Roberts's Southern Counties - 18 
 Rogers's Essays from Edinb. Review 18 
 
 Roget's English Thesaurus - - 18 
 
 RuBseU's Life of Lord W. RusseU 19 
 
 Schmitx'a History of Greece - 19 
 
 Smith's Sacred Annals - - - 20 
 
 Southey's Doctor - . - - 20 
 
 Stephen's EccleBiastical Bioiiraphy 21 
 
 '' Lectures on French History 21 
 
 Sydney Smith's Works - - - 20 
 
 « Select Works - 23 
 
 " Lectures - - 20 
 
 " Memoirs - - 20 
 
 Taylor's Loyola - - - - 21 
 
 " ^^esley - . - - 21 
 
 Thirlwall'sHistoryof Greece - 21 
 
 Thornbury's Shakspeare'e England 21 
 
 Townseud's State Trials - - 22 
 
 Turkey and Christendom - - 23 
 
 Turner's Anglo-Saxons - - 22 
 
 " Middle Ages - - - 22 
 
 " Sacred Hut. of the World 22 
 
 Vehse's Austrian Court- - - 22 
 
 ■Wade's England's Greatness - 22 
 
 Wliitelocke's Swedish Embassy - 24 
 
 Woods's Crimean Campaign- - 24 
 
 Young's Christ of History - - 21 
 
 Geography and Atlases. 
 
 Arrowemith's Geogr. Diet, of Bible 3 
 
 Brewer's Historical Atlas - . 4 
 
 Butler'sGeography and Atlases - 6 
 
 Cabinet Gazetteer - . - - 5 
 
 Cornwall: Its Mines, &c. - - 23 
 
 Durrleu's Morocco - - - 23 
 
 Hughes's Australian Colonies 23 
 
 Johnston's General Gazetteer - 11 
 
 Maunder's Treasury of Geography 15 
 M'CuUoch'sGeographicalDictionary 14 
 
 " Russia and Turkey - 23 
 
 Milner's Baltic Sea - - 15 
 
 " Crimea - - - - 15 
 
 " Russia - - - - 15 
 
 Murray's Encyclo. of Geography - IG 
 
 Sharp's BritiBh Gazetteer - - 19 
 
 Wheeler's Geography of Herodotus 24 
 
 Juvenile Books. 
 
 Amy Herbert - - - - 19 
 
 Cleve Hall - - - - . 19 
 
 Earl's Daughter {The) - - - 19 
 
 Experience of Life - _ . 19 
 
 Gertrude ----- jg 
 
 Gilbart'B Logic for the Youn^ - 8 
 
 Hewitt's Boy's Country Book - 10 
 
 " (Mary) Children's Yeaj - 10 
 
 Ivors _ 19 
 
 Katharine Ashton - - 19 
 
 Laneton Farsonage - - - 19 
 
 Margaret Percival - - - - 19 
 
 Medicine and Surgery. 
 
 Brodie's Psychological Inquiries - 4 
 
 Bull's Hints to Mothers • - - s 
 
 " Managementof Children - 5 
 
 Copland's Dictionary of Medicine - 6 
 
 Cust's InvaUd's Own Book - - 7 
 
 Holland's Mental Physiology - 9 
 " Medical Notes andkeflect. 9 
 
 How to Nurse Sick Children - - 10 
 
 Kesteven's Domestic Medicine - 11 
 
 Pereira's Materia Medica - - 17 
 
 Reece's Medical Guide - - - 18 
 
 West on Diseases of Infancy -. 22 
 
 WiJson'B DiBeector's Manual 21 
 
 Miscellaneous and General 
 Literature. 
 
 Carlisle's Lectures and AddresSbs 23 
 
 DetcDCf! ot Eclipse 0/ F6ith - - 7 
 
 Digby's Lover's Seat - - 7 
 
 Eclipse ofFaith - - _ _ 7 
 
 Greg's Political and Social Essays B 
 
 Gurnev'8 Evening Recreations - 8 
 
 Hassallon Adulteration of Fcoi - 9 
 
 Havdn's Book of Dignities - - g 
 
 Holland's Mental Physiology - 9 
 
 Hooker's Kew Guides - - - 9 
 
 Howitt's Rural Life of England - 10 
 • '* i^VisitBto RemarkablePIaces 10 
 
 Jameson's Commonplace Book - 11 
 
 Jeffrey's (Lord) Contributions - 11 
 
 Last of the Old Squires - - 17 
 
 Macaulay's Crit. and Hist. Essays 13 
 
 " Speeches - - - 13 
 
 Mackintosh's Miscellaneous Works 14 
 
 Klemoirs of a Maitre-d'Armes - 23 
 
CLASSTBTED INDEX. 
 
 Maitland'eChnrchiii the Catacombs 14 
 
 Marti&eaa's Miscellanies - - 14 
 
 Paecal'B WorVSjby Pearce - - 17 
 Fillaos's Contribmions to Edncationl? 
 
 Pinney on Duration oF Human Lire 17 
 
 Printing: Its Origin, &c. - - 23 
 
 Pycroft'8 Eoglish Reading - - 18 
 
 Rich'a Comp. to Latin Dictionary 18 
 
 Kiddle's Latin Dictionaries - - 18 
 
 Ronton'8 Debater - - - IB 
 
 Seaward's Narrative of hia Shipwieckl9 
 
 Sir Roger de Coverley - - - 20 
 
 Smith's (Rev. Sydney) Works - 2U 
 
 Soatbey's Common -place Books - 20 
 
 " The Doctor &c. - 20 
 
 Souvestre's Attic Philosopher - 23 
 
 " Confessionsof a Working Man 23 
 
 Spencer's Psychology - - - 21 
 
 Stephen's Essays - - - - 21 
 
 Stows Training System - - 21 
 
 Strachey'8 Hebrew Politics - 21 
 
 Thomson's Laws of Thought 21 
 
 Townsend's State Trials - - 22 
 
 WiUich's Popular Tables - - 24 
 
 Yonge's Engliah-Greek Lexicon - 21 
 
 " Latin Gradus - - 24 
 
 Zumpt's Latin Grammar - -24 
 
 Natural History in general. 
 
 CatloWs Popular Conchology - 6 
 Ephemeraand Young on the Salmon 7 
 GoEse's Natural History of Jamaica 8 
 Kemp's Natural History of Creation 23 
 Kirby and Spence'a Entomolt^y - 11 
 Lee's Elemeiita of Natural History 12 
 Mann on Reproduction - - 14 
 
 Maunder's Natural History - - 15 
 Turton'sShellsonheBritishlslands 22 
 Tan der HoeTcn's Handbook of 
 
 Zoology 22 
 
 Yon Tschudi's Sketches in the Alps 23 
 
 Waterton's Essays on Natural Hist. 22 
 
 Touatf 8 ThB Dog - - - - 24 
 
 " The Horse - 24 
 
 1-Volnme Encyclopeetlias 
 and Dictionaries. 
 
 ArroTCsmith's Geogr. Diet, of Bible 3 
 
 Blaine's Rural Sports - - - 4 
 
 Brande's Science,Literature^andArt 4 
 
 Coplanil'sDictionary of Medicine - 6 
 
 Cresy's Civil Engineering - - S 
 
 Gwilfs Architecture - _ - 8 
 
 Johnston's Geographical Dictionary 11 
 
 London's Agriculture - - • 13 
 
 " Rural Architecture - 13 
 
 *< Gardening - . - 13 
 
 " Plants - - - 13 
 
 " Trees and Shrubs - - 13 
 
 M'Culloeh's Geographical Dictionary 14 
 
 " Dictionary of Commerce 14 
 
 Murray's Encyclo. of Geography - 16 
 
 Sharp's British Gazetteer - - 19 
 
 Ure's Dictionary of Arts, &c, - - 22 
 
 Webster's Domestic Economy - 22 
 
 Religious & Moral Works. 
 
 Amy Herbert - . - - 19 
 
 Arrowsmith'sGeogr, Diet, of Bible 3 
 
 Bloomfield'sGreekTestament - 4 
 
 Calvert's Wife's Manual - - 6 
 
 Cleve H<ill 19 
 
 Co&ybeare'fi Essays - - - 6 
 
 Conybeare and Howson's St. Paul 6 
 Cotton's Instructions in Christianity 7 
 
 Dale's Domestic Litui^y - - 7 
 
 Defence of Eclipse qf Faith - - 7 
 
 Discipline - - _ - _ 7 
 
 Earl's Daughter (The) - - - 19 
 
 EcUpse of Faith - - - . 7 
 
 BngUshman's Greek Concordance 7 
 
 " Heb.&Chald.Concord. 7 
 
 Etheridce's Jerusalem - - - 7 
 
 Experience (The) of Life - - 19 
 
 Gertrude - . . _ 19 
 
 Harrison's Light of the FoT^ - 8 
 
 Hook's Lectures on Passion Week 9 
 
 Home's Introduction to Scriptures 10 
 
 " Abridgment of ditto - 10 
 
 Humphreys's Parables Illuminated 10 
 
 Ivors --.-__ 19 
 
 Jameson's Sacred Legends - - 11 
 
 " Monastic Legends - - 11 
 
 Legends of the Madonna II 
 • Lectures on Female Em- 
 ployment - - - _ -11 
 
 Jeremy Taylor's Woris - - - 11 
 
 Ealisch'BCommentaiyon Exodus- 11 
 
 Katharine Ashton - - - 19 
 
 Konig's Pictorial Life of Luther - 8 
 
 Laneton Parsonage - ■*- 19 
 
 Letters to my UnknoTvn Friends - 12 
 
 " on Happiness - - - 12 
 Lynch's Rivulet - - ,-13 
 
 Lyra Germanica - - - _ 5 
 
 Macnaught on Insfuration - 14 
 
 Maitland'e Church in Catacombs - 14 
 
 Martineau's Christian Life - 14 
 
 " Hymns - • 14 
 
 Milner's Church of Christ - - 15 
 
 Montgomery's Original Hymns - 15 
 
 Moore on the Use of the Body - 16 
 
 " " Soul and Body - 16 
 
 ' " 'e Man and his Motives - 16 
 
 Mormonism - - - - ' tH 
 
 Neale's Closing Scene - - - 16 
 
 Newman's (J. H.) Discourses - 17 
 
 *' on Universities - - 16 
 
 Ranke's Ferdinand & MaximiUau 23 
 
 Readings for Lent - - - 19 
 
 " Confirmation - - 19 
 
 Robinson's Lexicon to the Greek 
 
 Testament ----- 18 
 Saintftour Example - - - 19 
 Sermon in the Mount - - 19 
 
 Sinclair's Journey of Life - - 20 
 Smith's (Sydney) Moral Philosophy 20 
 " fG.) Sacred Ajmals - - 20 
 " Harmony of Divine Dis- 
 pensations ----- 20 
 " (J.) Voyage and Shipwreck 
 of St. Paul - - - - 20 
 Southey's Life of Wesley - - 20 
 Stephen's Ecclesiastic^ Biography 21 
 Tayler's (J. J.) Discourses - - 21 
 Taylor's Loyola - _ - 21 
 
 " Wesley - - - 21 
 
 Theologia Germanica - - - 6 
 Thomson on the Atonement - - 21 
 Thumb Bible (The) - - 21 
 
 Tomline'sIntroductiontotheBiWe 22 
 Turner's Sacred History - - - 22 
 Twining'8 Bible Types - - - 22 
 Wheeler's Popular Bible Harmony 24 
 Young's Christ of History - - 24 
 Mystery - - - - 24 
 
 Poetry and the Drama. 
 
 Aikin's (Dr.l British Poets 3 
 
 Arnold's Poems - - - - 3 
 
 Baillie's (Joanna) Poetical Works 3 
 
 Bode's Ballads from Herodotus - ' 4 
 
 Calvert's Wife's Manual - - 6 
 
 " Pneuma - - - - 6 
 
 Flowurs and their Kindred Thoughts 11 
 
 Goldsmith's Poems, illustrated - 8 
 
 L. E. L.'s Poetical Works - - 12 
 
 Linwood's Anthologia Oxoniensifl- 13 
 
 Lynch's Rivulet - - - - 13 
 
 Lyra Germanica - - - - 6 
 
 Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome 13 
 
 Mac Donald's Within and Without 14 
 
 Montgomery's Poetical Works - 15 
 
 " Original Hymns - 15 
 
 Moore's Poetical Works - - 16 
 
 " Epicurean - - - - 16 
 
 " LallaRookh - - - 16 
 
 '* Irish Melodies - - 16 
 
 " Songs and Ballads - Ifi 
 
 Reade's Man in Paradise - 18 
 
 Shalcspeare.by Bowdler - 19 
 
 Southey's Poetical Works - - 20 
 
 " British Poets - - - 20 
 
 Thomson's Seasons, illustrated - 21 
 
 Political Economy and 
 Statistics. 
 
 Caird's Letters on Agriculture - 6 
 
 Dodd's Food of London " " 1 
 
 Greg's Political and Social Essays 
 
 Jennings's Social Delusions - - H 
 
 Laing's Notes of a Traveller- - 23 
 
 M'Culloch'sGeog.Statist.&c.Dict. 14 
 " Dictionary of Commerce 14 
 
 " London - - - 23 
 
 Tegoborski's Russian Statistics - 21 
 
 Waiich's Popular Tables - - 24 
 
 Tlie Sciences in general 
 and Mathematics. 
 
 Arago's Meteorological Essays - 3 
 
 " Popular A stronomy - - 3 
 
 Bourne on the Screv? Propeller - 4 
 i Catechism of the Steam- 
 
 Enein 
 
 Brande's Dictionary of Science, Ac. 4 
 
 " Lectures on Organic Chemistry 4 
 
 Brougham and Bontii's PrtJicipia 4 
 
 Butler's Rolls Sermons - - - 5 
 
 Cresy's Civil Engineering - - 6 
 DelaBeche'sGeologyofComwaU,&c- 7 
 
 De la Rive's Electncitj - - 7 
 
 Faraday's Non-Metallic Elements 8 
 
 Grove's Correla. of Physical Forces 8 
 
 TJerschel's Outlines of Astronomy 9 
 
 Holland's Mental Physiology - 9 
 
 Humboldt's Aspects ef Nature 10 
 
 *' Cosmos - - - 10 
 
 Hunt on Light - - - . 10 
 
 Kemp's Phasis of Matter - - 11 
 
 Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopedia - 12 
 
 Mann on Reproduction - - - 14 
 
 Marcet's (Mrs.) Conversations - 15 
 
 Morell's Elements of Psychology - 16 
 
 Moseley'sEngineering&Architecture 17 
 
 Nomos ------ 17 
 
 Our Coal-Fields and our Coai-Pits 23 
 
 Owen's Lectureson Comp Anatomy 17 
 
 Pereira on Polarised Light - - 17 
 
 Peschel's Elements of Physics - 17 
 
 PhiUips'B Fossils of Cornwall, &c. 17 
 
 " Mineralogy - - - 17 
 
 " Guide to Geology - - 18 
 
 Portlock's Geology ofLoudonderry 18 
 
 Powell's Unity of Worlds - - 18 
 
 Smee's Electro- Metallurgy - - 20 
 
 Steam-Engine (The) - - - 4 
 
 Wilson's Electric Telegraph - - 23 
 
 Rural Sports. 
 
 Baker's Rifle and Hound in Ceylon ^ 
 
 Blaine's Dictionary of Sports - * 
 
 Cecil's Stable Practice - - - 6 
 
 " Stud Farm- - - 6 
 
 The Cricket-Field - - - ^ 
 
 Davy's Piscatorial Colloquica - "^ 
 
 Ephemera on Angling - _ - 7 
 
 *' Book of the Salmon - ^ 
 
 Hawker's Young Sportsman - - 9 
 
 The Hunting-Field - 9 
 
 Idle's Hints on Shooting • 10 
 
 Pocket and the Stud - - - 9 
 
 Practical Horsemanship - - 9 
 
 Richardson's HoraemauGhip - - 18 
 Konalds's Fly-Fisher's Entomo- 
 
 logy - 18 
 
 Stable Talk and Table Talk - - 9 
 
 Stainton's June - - - - 21 
 
 Stonehenge on the Greyhound - 21 
 
 Thacker's Courser's Guide - - 21 
 
 The Stud, forPracticalPurposei- ^ 
 
 Veterinary Medicine^ &c. 
 
 Cecil's Stable Practice & 
 
 " Stud Farm - 6 
 
 Hunting Fidd (The) - 9 
 
 Miles'B Horse-Shoeine - - - 15 
 
 " on the Horse's Foot - - 15 
 
 Pocket and the Stud - - - 9 
 
 Practical Horsemanship - - 9 
 
 Richardson's Horsemanship - 18 
 
 Stable Talk and TaUe Talk ■ - 9 
 
 Stud (The) - - - - 9 
 
 Youatt's The Dog - - - - 24 
 
 " The Horse - - 24 
 
 Voyages and Travels. 
 
 Auldjo's Ascent of Mont Blanc - 23 
 
 Baines's Vaudois of Piedmont - 23 
 
 Baker's Wanderings in Ceylon - 3 
 
 Barrow's Continental Tour - - 23 
 
 Earth's African Travels - - 3 
 
 Burton's East Africa - - 5 
 
 " Medina and Mecca - 5 
 
 Carlisle's Turkey and Greece - 6 
 De Custine's Russia - -23 
 
 Eothen ------ 23 
 
 Ferguson's Swiss Travels - - 23 
 
 Flemith Interiors - - - - 8 
 
 Forester's Rambles in Norway - 23 
 
 " Sardinia and Corsica - 8 
 
 Gironi^re's Philippines - - 23 
 
 Gregorovius's Corsica - - 23 
 
 Haluiraa's Japan - - ~ 8 
 
 Hill's Travels in Siberia - - 9 
 
 Hope's Brittany and the Bible - 23 
 
 '' Chase in Brittany - - 23 
 
 Howitt's Art-Student in Munich - 10 
 
 " (W.) Victoria - - - 10 
 
 Hue's Chinese Empire - - - 10 
 
 Hue and Gabet'sTartary<S: Thibet 23 
 
 Hudson and Kennedy's Mont 
 
 Blanc 10 
 
 Hughes's Australran Colonies - 23 
 
 Humboldt's Aspects of Nature - 10 
 
 Hurlbut's Pictures from Cuba _ - 23 
 
 Hutchinson's African Exploration 23 
 
 Jameson's Canada - - • - 23 
 
 Jerrmann's St, Petersburg - - 23 
 
 Kennard's Eastern Tour - - 11 
 
 Laing's Norway - - - " ^ 
 
 " Notes of a Traveller 23 
 M'Clure's Jiorth-West 
 Mason's Zulus of Natal 
 
 Mayne's Arctic Discoveries - 23 
 
 Miles'a Rambles in Iceland - - 23 
 
 Pfeiffet's Voyage round the World 23 
 
 '* Second ditto - ' * ^I 
 
 Scott'« Danes and Swedes - ' „ 
 
 Seaward'B Narrative - - - 19 
 
 Weld's United States and Canada- 22 
 
 Weme's African Wanderings - 23 
 
 Wheeler's Twvels of Herodotus - 24 
 WUberforce'e Brazil ftSlavfe-Tiade 23 
 
 Works of Fiction. 
 
 Arnold's Oakfield - 3 
 
 MacdouBld's Villa Veroccbio • 1^ 
 
 Sir Roger de Cororley - " " ^ 
 
 Southey's The Doctor ftc. - - 20 
 
 Trollope'B Warden - - - 22 
 
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