those of which we are treating appear more marked, or the progress of
society more decided, than in the interference of the ruling powers of
olden times with various descriptions of trades and occupations. There
were the assizes or ordinances regulating the price of bread, ale,
fuel, and other common necessaries of life; they clipped or expanded
servants' and workmen's wages; prohibited or encouraged by bounties
the growth of various articles of consumption; adjusted carriers'
charges and the numbers of horses they might use up certain hills;
permitted the sale of many things only by license; and otherwise sadly
dammed up the current of human progression within their own narrow
channel. As regards servants' wages, it would appear that the scale
allowed early in the seventeenth century was far from illiberal, for in
the year 1613 the authorities of Broadway petitioned "that servants'
wages be rated according to the statute in that case, for we find it
a great grievance in this county the unreasonableness of servants'
wages, so that they have grown proud and idle." The rates for wages for
servants and labourers fixed in 1663 were as follows:
£. s. d.
"A bailie of husbandrie by the yeare 4 0 0
A cheife hynde by the yeare 3 6 8
An ordinary husbandman 2 10 0
A laborer by the day without meat and drinke from the
feast of All Saints untill Candlemas 0 0 7
And with meate and drinke 0 0 3
After Candlemas vntill harvest without meate and drinke 0 0 8
And with meate and drinke 0 0 4
A mower by the day without meate and drinke 0 1 0
And with meate and drinke 0 0 6
A reaper the like as a mower.
A woman reaper without meate and drinke. 0 0 8
And with meat and drinke 0 0 4
Sawers by the hundred, without meate and drinke 0 2 4
With meate and drinke 0 1 2
A thatcher by the day without meate and drinke 0 1 0
And with meate and drinke 0 0 6
A carpenter by the day without meate and drinke 0 1 0
And with meate and drinke 0 0 6
A mason the like wages as a carpenter
A laborer with a carpenter or a mason by the day without
meate and drinke 0 0 10
A made servant, by the yeare 1 10 0
A dairy maide or cheife maide servant, by the yeare 2 0 0"
In 1731 it was ordered "that printed advertisements be publicly sett
upp in all publick places that the wages and rates of servants and
labourers be the same as last year, except masons, who are allowed 14d.
a day."
The corn trade was an object of special attention. An instance of the
great want of agricultural statistics occurs in the year 1631, when
the subjoined imperious missive was received by the Worcestershire
magistrates from the government officials at Whitehall. This document
will probably be considered confirmatory of the experience derived
from history--namely, that whether a state undertakes to buy for the
people what they may want for their consumption, or regulates the trade
by interfering with the supply, it is immaterial as to the result. In
either case the people may expect to be starved whenever corn is scarce:
"We cannot but very greatly merveile (marvel) that
notwithstanding his Majesty's proclamation and book of orders
and the diverse earnest letters of this Board, the price of
corne and other graine is risen so high, and the same sold at
such excessive rates in many places; neyther can wee conceave
how this can be if the directions sent from hence had been duly
executed; you are therfore to take notice that wee expect a
more careful performance thereof and a more particular account
then hath hitherto been given us, and accordingly wee do
hereby, in his Majesty's name, expressly charge you to cause
presently a diligent and exact survey to be made through all
that county, what provisions of graine there is, and to returne
to this Board a certificate thereof with all expedition, and
likewise to see the markets well served according to the
orders, and not forestalled by greedy engrossers, to the
intollerable wrong and prejudice of those that are to buy,
especially of the poorer sort. You are likewise to use your
best care and endeavour that during the continuance of this
present dearth the maltsters be not permitted to make any
greater quantities of malt than may be sufficient for necessary
use; that soe there may be more plenty of barley for the
reliefe of the poore; and soe wee bid you hartily farewell.
(Signed by) "LONDON. "H. MANCHESTER.
"DORCHESTER. "DANLEY.
"EXETER. "E. NEWBURGH.
"LINDSEY. "J. FALKLAND.
"THO. COVENTRY. "T. COKE."
In 1715 it was ordered "that Richard Carwardine, of Castle Morton,
have a licence to be a comon badger of corne for one year;" and in
1732, "that Thomas Wadley, of Hanley Castle, have a licence granted
him to be a common badger, buyer, seller, and carrier, of all sorts of
corn and grain in any fair or market within this kingdom of England,
so that the same continue in force but for one year from the date
hereof and no longer." These badgers of corn were persons who bought
corn to sell again. By the statute 5th Elizabeth, chap. 12, they were
compelled to take out an annual licence from the Quarter Sessions. At
the present time, persons who go round to the farms and cottages in the
neighbourhood of Monmouth to buy poultry and bring it for sale to the
market at Monmouth are called "badgers."
In pursuance of an act passed in 1769, weekly returns of the prices
of wheat, rye, barley, oats, and beans, were ordered from Bewdley,
Kidderminster, Stourbridge, Dudley, and Bromsgrove; and the following
persons were instructed to furnish such returns: Timothy Clare,
stationer, Bewdley; John Fawcett, weaver, Kidderminster; Robert West,
stationer, Stourbridge; Oliver Dixon, mercer, Dudley; and George Wall,
skinner, Bromsgrove.
Towards the close of the same century many convictions took place "for
selling loaves of bread without imprinting on them the letter W in
Roman capital, the said loaves not being rasped either before or after
the bespeaking or purchasing thereof, against the form of the statute."
Ordered (in 1710) "that Wm. Dimock, of Bishampton, have a licence for
a comon higler, lader, kedder, carrier, buyer, and seller, of hens,
chickens, capons, eggs, butter, cheese, ffish, and all other dead
vittualls, except pheasants, hares, and partridges." The Clerk of the
Peace was instructed in 1730 "to give notice by public advertisement in
the Worcester newspaper for all carriers in the said county to attend
this Court at the adjourned Sessions, in order to settle the price of
carriages, according to the form of the statute in that case made and
provided." It was likewise ordered "that no common waggoner or carrier
shall take for carrying any goods to or from Bewdley to London the sum
of more than 7s. per cwt. till further order." And in 1752, "that every
waggon or other carriage drawn up from the signe of the White Hart,
Broadway, to the top of the hill, so far as in the county of Worcester,
may be drawn with ten horses if the owner shall think proper." Ditto,
up the Malvern Hill, with seven. Tolerably suggestive this of queer
roads and stiff gradients. The rates of carriage to be charged by
carriers were fixed by the Quarter Sessions under the statute 3rd
William and Mary, chap. 12, sec. 24, and the number of horses by which
carts and waggons were to be drawn was regulated by the statute 5th
George I, chap. 12.
Large quantities of salt were from time to time lost in the Severn, as
the vessels laden with that commodity were making their way down the
river from Worcester, owing to strong tides and violent winds; and the
rolls record frequent applications to the Court "for certificates to
entitle them (the owners) to such allowance as the act of Parliament
permits." These allowances were no doubt the return of a part or the
whole of the very heavy duty then levied on salt.
By the 21st George III, chap. 58, and 26th George III, chap. 43,
certain bounties were offered for the cultivation of hemp and flax.
Nevertheless, England has never grown a sufficient quantity for its
own consumption, farmers not regarding it with favour, owing to the
supposed exhaustive nature of the crop. In Worcestershire, for 1782
and some following years, claims were made (and allowed by Quarter
Sessions) for these bounties, by--
Jos. Cooper the elder } All Saints, Evesham
Jos. Cooper the younger }
(grown by them at Bretforton, Great Hampton, Fladbury,
Pershore, Honeybourne, Cropthorne, and the Littletons).
John Taylor of Bromsgrove.
Henry Ellins of Stoke Prior, at Rushock, Doverdale, Bromsgrove,
Stoke, and Hanbury.
Thomas Brooks, Droitwich, at Doverdale.
John Tolley of Stoke, at Tardebigg and Hanbury.
Jos. Rose, Bromsgrove.
George Dunklin, ditto.
William Moore, Tardebigg.
Jos. Downing, Bromsgrove.
James Andrews, Pershore.
John Corbyn, Tardebigg.
James Heynes, Alvechurch.
William Shepherd, ditto.
Eliz. Eaves, ditto.
Edw. Pearkes, ditto.
Thomas Overton, Tardebigg.
Jos. Duffill, Bromsgrove.
H. D. Humphries, ditto.
Jos. Rose, ditto.
William Hutchins, Wick, Pershore.
John Tolley, Stoke.
Clement Nash, Stoke.
William Tay, Kingsnorton.
Jos. Everill, Tenbury.
Jos. Downing, Belbroughton.
Thomas Brookes, Droitwich.
From 1787 to 1792 the Worcestershire claims for flax bounty amounted to
£79. 8s. 10d., and these were allowed.
Tobacco also was an article of which the Court of Quarter Sessions took
cognisance, and some interesting particulars relative to the growth and
suppression of "the weed" in Worcestershire will be found in another
part of this work.
In the year 1670 the grand jury presented Henry Sandalls, bailiff of
Bewdley, "who hath toll of the market, for upholding unjust measures;"
Elias Arch, bailiff of Kidderminster, ditto; Thomas Foley, Esq., "who
receives the benefit of the toll of Stourbridge, for not providing a
brass measure according to act of Parliament, and for not making the
measures of the town according to the same; and that the justices
do take into consideration the great abuse that the people of this
county which resort to this city of Worcester to market do receive
by unjustness of the measures, and by the jogging and shaking of the
same;" and suggesting various rewards for the capture of several known
offenders.
About the year 1747 a terrible distemper broke out amongst horned
cattle, which all the vigilance of the authorities could not prevent
from spreading. The Worcestershire Bench first ordered "that 4s. per
week be allowed to the several turnpikes where it shall be thought
necessary in order to have a man sitt up every night to watch the sayd
turnpikes, that no horned cattle be permitted to goe through the sayd
turnpikes without propper certificates be first showne, and surveyors
of the severall turnpikes to appoint propper persons to watch at the
said turnpikes, the expense to be paid by the county." Next year it
was ordered "that Grey Devy, of Kingswinford, be appointed inspector
for the hundred of Halfshire in relation to infected cattle, to take
care that no infected cattle be brought into any parish of the said
hundred, and persue the order of counsel made for preventing the
spreading the infection amongst the horned cattle; and to be allowed
7s. a week till further order." In 1750 the distemper still raged,
especially in the adjoining county of Salop, and the magistrates
licensed "Edmund Lechmere, of Hanley Castle, Esq., to buy and sell
cattle at any fair, market, or place, where the buying or selling of
cattle is not prohibited, and to drive, sell, or dispose of them, at
any other fair, market, or place, as aforesaid, tho' he shall not have
obtained the certificate directed by the said court, the said Edmund
Lechmere having entered into a recognizance with two suretys, according
to the directions of the said act" (of the previous Session). Many
other similar licenses were afterwards granted, and the constables
were ordered to prevent all persons not having such licenses from
driving cattle to fairs, nor was any person allowed to bring cattle
into the county without a certificate of their freedom from disease.
The Clerk of the Peace was also ordered to procure 600 copies of an
abstract of a certain treatise on the distemper, with a prescribed
method of cure, by an eminent physician in Worcester, and distribute
them to the chief constables and inspectors in this and the adjoining
counties of Salop and Warwick. The _cordon sanitaire_ was relaxed in
1751, but the following year the distemper broke out in this county
with great severity, and vigilance was again renewed. A meeting
having been advertised for buying and selling cattle at Beoley, the
Sessions ordered that the meeting be prohibited, the distemper being at
Kingsnorton, and that it be advertised in the Worcester and Birmingham
journals, and notice given in Beoley church. It was not till July,
1756, that the distemper entirely abated, and all orders were rescinded.
The Church and the People.
"Three strangers blaze amidst the bonfire's revel:
The Pope, and the Pretender, and the Devil.
Three strangers hate our faith and faith's defender:
The Devil, and the Pope, and the Pretender.
The strangers will be strangers long, we hope:
The Devil, and the Pretender, and the Pope.
Thus in three rhymes three strangers dance the hay,
And he that chooses to dance after them may."
We now come to a class of items chiefly connected with ecclesiastical
control over matters both secular and religious--instances of the
exercise of power by the Church for the punishment of offenders against
her discipline. Every reader of history is acquainted with the force
and effect of excommunication in the middle ages. By a sentence of
excommunication, both greater and less, the victims were excluded from
the right of Christian burial, from bringing or maintaining actions,
from becoming attorneys or jurymen, and were rendered incapable of
becoming witnesses in any cause. Long before the Reformation the
frequency and abuse of this ecclesiastical weapon proved both a scandal
and a disadvantage to the Church, by bringing the practice in some
degree into contempt; and in the thirteenth century many applications
were made to the king complaining of the resistance of excommunicated
offenders who defied the utmost that the Church could do to reduce them
to submission. In 1289, John, vicar of Feckenham, was excommunicated
by Godfrey, Bishop of Worcester, who appealed in the same manner
for secular aid. When the nation reformed its religion, the power of
excommunication was still retained by the Church, and is in force even
to the present day, although modified by the 53rd of George III, chap.
127, which restricts the maximum term of imprisonment in all such
cases to six months. (See more on this subject under the head of St.
Nicholas' parish.) Obstinately refusing to attend divine service in the
parish church, incontinency, contumacy in not appearing when cited in
the Consistory Court, brawling, and scolding--these were the principal
offences for the punishment of which the Church most frequently put
forth her power, as also on Quakers and Popish recusants.
I am sorry to be compelled to state that the first example occurring
in these rolls is that of a female scold. In 1614, Margaret, wife of
John Bache, of Chaddesley, was presented to the Sessions as "a comon
skould and a sower of strife and disorder amongste her neyghboures,
and hath bynn presented for a skoulde at the leete houlden for
the manour of Chadsley, and for misbehavyng her tonge towards her
mother-in-law at a vysytacon (visitation) at Bromsgrove, April 29,
1603, and was excommunicated therefore." In 1617, one Elinor Nichols
was presented "as a great scold and mischief maker, who is said to
have been excommunicated and had never applied to make her peace with
the Church." The usual mode of punishing this class of offenders was,
however, by the cucking-stool. A valued correspondent, in commenting
upon the details of the gum-stool, or cucking-stool, and other
punishments mentioned at pages 110 and 111 of "Worcester in Olden
Times" (in which an engraving is given of a curious instrument of
torture still hanging on the wall of Worcester Guildhall), says--
"The gum-stool is evidently the cucking-stool, though it never
occurred to me that Cooking Street was really Cucking Street,
and had had its name spelt Cucken in old maps, as you state.
The term cuckold-stool is inaccurate, as this punishment is for
scolding to the common nuisance of the neighbourhood, and has
no reference to conjugal infidelity. The cucking-stool is the
legal punishment of the criminal offence of scolding; and if a
woman had been indicted and convicted of this offence at the
last Assizes, the learned judge must have sentenced her to the
cucking-stool. The common scold (_Communis Rixatrix_)--for the
law confines it to the feminine gender--is a public nuisance
to her neighbourhood, and may be indicted for the offence, and
upon conviction punished by being placed on a certain engine
of correction called the trebucket, or cucking-stool; and she
may be convicted without setting forth the particulars in the
indictment, though the offence must be set forth in technical
words and with convenient certainty; and the indictment must
conclude not only against the peace but to the common nuisance
of her majesty's liege subjects. It is not necessary to give
in evidence the particular expressions used: it is sufficient
to prove generally that the defendant is always scolding. The
skimmington is a mock procession got up in derision of a woman
who has beaten her husband. You will find it in Hudibras. When
a boy, I saw a skimmington, and in it a man dressed in woman's
clothes, who rode on horseback behind a stuffed figure of a
man, carrying a ladle, with which the supposed woman kept
beating the stuffed figure about the head. This, too, has no
reference to conjugal infidelity. But in Wilts and Berks there
is a mock procession that does relate to conjugal infidelity;
but this is called a 'Woosset,' which is pronounced 'Oosset'.
It is a rough band followed by a person bearing a long pole,
with a cross-bar across it, on which is placed a shirt, and
at the top of the pole is a horse's skull with a pair of
bull's horns attached to it. This I have also seen. I have
omitted to mention that cucking-stools were of two kinds--the
one fixed, the other moveable. That mentioned in 'Worcester
in the Olden Times' (p. 110), must have been of the latter
kind. A lithograph of each is in No. 1 of the Magazine of
the Wilts Archæological Society. The bridle for scolds still
exists in several places; there is one in the Ashmoloean
Museum at Oxford; another was in the magistrates' room at
Shrewsbury, but has been stolen within the last few years;
one is figured in one of the volumes of the Penny Magazine,
under the title 'Obsolete Punishments,' and another in Plott's
'Staffordshire;' but it is very remarkable that though so
commonly seen, these bridles, called 'Branks,' are nowhere
mentioned in our law books, though cucking-stools always are
whenever the offence of scolding is treated of or referred to."
But to return to ecclesiastical matters. In the year 1620, Robert Lucy,
of Droitwich, was ordered to appear before the Sessions Court "for
killinge of fleshe this Lent." By the statutes 2nd and 3rd Edward VI,
chap. 19, and 5th Elizabeth, chap. 5 (an act for maintenance of the
navy), the eating of flesh in Lent is prohibited under penalties; but I
know of no statute which inflicts any penalty on butchers for killing
in Lent.
The Sessions rolls contain some sad pictures of clerical misbehaviour
in the seventeenth century--a period when the clergy, as a body,
had become a plebeian class, when (as Macaulay assures us) "for one
who made the figure of a gentleman, ten were mere menial servants,"
many of the ejected ministers during the domination of the Puritans
obtaining bread and shelter only by attaching themselves to the
households of royalist gentlemen. The truth of the observation (see
Blount's "Reformation"), that "an indigent church makes a corrupt and
canting clergy," is apparent from the history of those times. In 1628,
articles were exhibited against the Rev. Henry Hunt, of Defford, "that
he is a malicious and contentious person and useth scandalous speeches
without regard to time or place, but even in the church, sometimes
before and sometimes after divine service, hath been known to break
out into violent swearing before he came forth of the pulpit, taunting
and reviling Rd. Damanne, and throwing stones at him in the field to
provoke him to strike him, and threatening to make him so poor with
suits that he should be glad to sell his mortuary for 2d.;" also that
he swore falsely at Worcester Assizes. "His mortuary" here evidently
means the amount of property that he would die worth. In some parishes
a sum of 10s. is still payable to the rectors or vicars on the death
of each householder in the parish who dies worth £40. This is called
"a mortuary." The Rev. William Hollington, of Alvechurch, was in 1641
reported as "a frequenter of alehouses, where he spendeth much time
both day and night, as well upon the Saboth as other week dayes in
idle and riotous company, in excessive drinking, and is a causer of
much drunkenness by procuring and persuading and enforcing others to
the drinking of whole cupes. He hath often drawn idle company to his
own house, where they have sent for much ale, and there abusefully
have spent in drunkness, quarrelling, and fighting. He is greatly
defamed of incontinensie with his neighbours' wives, and one of them
hath confest he did attempt her chastity, affirminge him to be as
bad as Bankes his predecessor, who to prevent punishment for his
unchast and incestuous living run away. That he dayley frequenteth
houses much suspected of lewdnes, often accompanied with a dangerous
armed Papist of idle behaviour, and assisted by him hath in the open
street given out rayling and threatning words against his neighbours,
calling them knaves and partisans, and hath affirmed they were not
Papists that rebelled in Ireland, and that Papists were noe rebbles but
honester men than Protestants. He hath been a hindrance of the taking
of the protestation, and doth omit the words in the reading of the
remonstrance 'and have cutt all theire throates,' to the end to obscure
from the people the greatness of the danger the House of Commons was in
as it is conceived in favour of the other side. A constable coming to
him in execution of his office to deliver the protestations of such as
were then and there present to take it, he gave him many reproachful
wordes, calling him knave, blockhead, loggerhead. He is a curser
and swearer, a nefarious pintious lyer, and a contentious person. He
stirred up and mayntained many shutes (suits) and much trouble in the
neighbourhood, hath sided and counselled with the old churchwarden
to the detayning of goods and money due to the church, and threatned
aney that durst question it. He hath laboured to hinder justice and to
countenance delinquents, is a quarreller and fighter. He advised and
aided in stealing away a widdowes daughter, the only child of his neer
neighbour, not above fourteen years old, and marying her to John Price,
a rude boy of idle behaviour, and noe good cloths to his back, though
the friends of the girl could have made her portion £200, and hath
never been heard to put up one prayer either for the Parliament or for
distressed Protestants in the kingdom of Irelande except on particular
times, and then it was with the limitation 'if soe that they be of the
same religion as wee are on.'"
It is difficult adequately to estimate the injurious effects to society
of such examples set on the part of the clergy. The judicious Hooker
observes that "the examples of clergy and great men are important, as
being seen afar off, like cities set on the tops of hills; but mean
men's actions are not greatly inquired into except by those who live at
the next door."