The Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine Volume 6 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1860 Excerpt: ... they seem to have retired from the thankless duty of finding fault, without finding a remedy; accordingly the more recent presentments are meagre, while the courts are held at long intervals (now every three years), instead of every six months as in the olden time. We are suffering under their fnilure. Our high poor rates are owing to those very encroachments against which they protested in vain. Had the Homage been properly supported by the lords of the manor and by the stewards, the population, squatting hibernice" on the margin of the common, would have been kept down, and the farmers here would not have had to support out of their profits those who contribute nothing by their industry to the agricultural employments of the place. They console themselves by the reflection--" delicto mnjorum immeritus litis,"--meaning by majorum, lords and stewards. I should add that, from some old Bradford papers, it appears that "the tything of Broughton" (as it is called) paid at Michaelmas yearlyl6d. at the court of the Abbess of Shaston at Bradford. The Abbess, being lady of the manor of Bradford, held a court for the hundred of Bradford, as well as for the borough of Bradford. And Broughton, being in the hundred, made the payment at the hundred court. Parochial Registers. These begin 1665,1 old style, Edmund Proby, who happily wrote an excellent hand, being Rector. They have been kept with tolerable regularity, excepting the baptisms between 29th November, 1812, and 25th April, 1813. The entries are in separate columns, and appear from the first to have been made singly and contemporaneously with the events recorded. During a vacancy in the incumbency the clerk seems to have made the entries, but generally the clergyman was the writer, signing his own name and some...