Lubbock, Bart., M.P., The Right Hon. E. P. Bouverie, G. T, S. Estcourt, Esq., M.P., G. P. Fuller, Esq., G. Goldney, Esq., M.P., W. H. Poynder, Esq., J. W. G. Spicer, Esq.

The COMMITTEE was re-elected, with the following additions: Rev. E. L. Barnwell, A. B. Fisher, Esq., Rev. A. B. Thynne, Rev. Canon Warre.

The GENERAL SECRETARIES, LOCAL SECRETARIES, GENERAL CURATORS and TREASURER were re-elected.

44

Justice in Warminster in the Olden Time."

By W. W. RAVENHILL, Esq.,

Honorary Secretary of the Wiltshire Society, founded A.D. 1817, and Recorder of Andover.

"I see men's judgments are

A parcel of their fortunes; and things outward

Do draw the inward quality after them,

To suffer all alike."

(Antony and Cleopatra, Act 3, s. 13.)

HEN I received the summons of our Secretary, to address

WHEN

you on a subject connected with this locality, there appeared the difficulty, so commonly felt, that though it abounds with ancient remains, yet history had preserved but a few faint facts, and many of these had already been brought under your notice. However, of justice, as it used to be in this district, I have a few notes, which I offer to the future historian of Warminster.

Did a Roman judge live at the villa at Pitmead? Were the Mauduits, Lords of Warminster, worthy successors of the Royal Manor Court? You can perhaps answer these questions for yourselves. You find an ancient Church,1 an old nunnery, a good market, to which the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. Could

1 Which an order of A.D. 1626 says: "Weeps many a fresh tear for her decayed house, especially when the wind is in the west." In 1620 an action was brought by the Vicar of Warminster, against the feoffees of the chapel of St. Lawrence, for not doing their duty. Stirring times!

these exist without lawyers? Wherever there are lawyers there must be justice.

ASSIZES.

In King Henry the Second's time judges of assize first came to Wiltshire. We must give them precedence.

Of the many charming pictures which that famous Wiltshireman, Mr. Addison, gives of his friend Sir Roger de Coverley, few are more vigorous than the visit to the assizes. Sir Roger (that worthy knight, who was at peace with himself and beloved and respected by all who knew him), Will Wimble, and Mr. Spectator, ride thither on horseback-it may have been from Warminster to Salisbury. On their way they fall in with two plain men, the first an honest and sensible yeoman, who had been several times foreman of petty juries, was just within the Game Act and could knock down a dinner with his gun twice or thrice a week; "a paragon, but that he shot just a few too many partridges." The other, Tom Touchy, who would take the law of everybody, at his own cost or theirs, and, with his head full of costs, damages, and ejectments, had squandered a fair portion of his patrimony in litigation.

How Sir Roger heard, at a good round trot, the legal argument between Will Wimble and Tom Touchy, as to the right of fishing in a certain hole, and then drawing rein for consideration, soothed the disputants with his judgment, "That there was much to be said on both sides." How, when the assize court was reached, Sir Roger's brother magistrates made way for him, that he might sit beside the judge. How the old knight whispered to the latter that "he was glad his lordship had met with so much good weather on circuit." The solemnity of the proceedings somewhat rather enhanced, than otherwise, by a little speech of Sir Roger's to the judge and court; the respect paid by the county gentlemen to Sir Roger at the rising of the court; the admiration of the general publie for the brave solemn knight who was not afraid to speak (Mr. Spectator says to no purpose) to the judge; the ride home; all this, gives us an assize as it was in Wiltshire in bygone days.

The assizes for this county were, till recently (with two exceptions) held at Salisbury. Now they are occupied chiefly with

the trials of prisoners and causes, but in the olden time those courts had cognizance of many other matters. There were heard appeals from quarter or petty sessions, concerning poor laws, or road repairs, &c., and a further jurisdiction as to men, women, morals, and property, quite paternal, though according to statute, common law, or custom.

The assize commissions of the western circuit have been preserved from the sixteenth century, and there are four volumes of orders, partly civil, partly criminal, extending from 1629 to 1688 (that most memorable period of our history) which throw some light on seventeenth century manners.1

It will be remembered that no Parliament sat in England from 1629 to 1640-King Charles I. was trying to get on without one. Then, in 1640, there was the Short Parliament (April 13th to May 5th-twenty-two days) which was dissolved; and on 3rd November following the Long Parliament assembled. Then came the Civil War, August, 1642; the king's death, January, 1649; Cromwell's rule; the Restoration, May, 29th, 1660; the Revolution bringing in William III., February, 13th, 1689. During the whole of this long agitated period of sixty years, assizes were held twice a year, except from the spring of 1643 to the summer of 1646, when almost every one was in arms.

There is an order of the judge of assize, Sir Robert Foster, directed to the inhabitants of Sturminster, Dorset (Dorchester was the last place on this circuit), to "repair their bridges," dated August 15th, 1642, seven days before King Charles unfurled his standard at Nottingham; and there is an order of an assize held at Wolvesay, near Winchester, August 6th, 1646, made by Mr. Justice (afterwards Chief Justice) Rolle, "that care shall be taken that legacies and gifts, &c., heretofore given to the poor of Broughton, Hants, shall be applied according to the true intent of the donors;" and a further order for raising a rate to repair the Church of that parish.

1 Warminster in the Seventeenth Century. See Ludlow's Memoirs, vol. i., p. 113, for a spirited account of that General's attempt to relieve Woodhouse, near Longleat, and his advance over Warminster Heath (Common), skirmish there, and retreat over the downs to Salisbury.

The law was thus often present to punish criminals, to exercise a municipal control suitable to those times, and to see that justice was done between man and man. It would be difficult to exaggerate the beneficial effect of such gatherings on the peace and well-being of the public at large. Only once was this interfered with, viz., in 1655, by the Rising in the West, of which an account will be found in vol. xiii. of this Magazine.

Permit me to give you a few more extracts from these records of the Western Circuit. During the summer circuit, 1646, four orders were made by Mr. Justice Rolle for all the counties included in the Western Circuit, strengthening the hands of the magistrates—as to the better regulation of the licensing of alehouses and suppressing those unlicensed, which had come into existence during the civil war. "Such a multiplicity of alehouses wherein were daily abuses and disorders, specially on sabbath dayes." A second, against the profanation of the sabbath, and the last Wednesday in each month, then appointed as a fast-day throughout the kingdom. A third, as to the due observance" of watch and ward in parish and tythinge; and fourth, that no person presented to the grand jury for misdemeanor or offence should be discharged without proper precautions.

These orders sometimes originated in the presentments of the grand juries, who, to their honour, were assisting the judges in the settlement of the country.

But there are orders on many subjects. For instance, A.D. 1631, against John Moody, of Upton Lovell, for turning, &c., Mr. Lambert's hedges and ditches. 1632, John Punchen, for baffling the law by lewd and cunning practices, in procuring that coseners Inigo Price, Peter Corinthe,' and George Hudson, be set at liberty, before they had satisfied their victims, which John is bound over to do. 1633, men drinking and wasting wine in a carrier's wain, &c. 1634, Thomas Smyth, alias Goddard, is allowed to retain his cottage at Herringslade, in the parish of Warminster, and tything of Smallbrook, which he had erected contrary to the statute 31st Elizabeth,

1 These names have a smack of the turf; there were Salisbury races in those days, which were prohibited by Cromwell as meeting-places for malignants.

Dorset is

which prohibited such erections. These are for Wilts. lax in Church-going, and Queen Elizabeth's fine-ls. for each offence-must be carefully levied. There is a great name from Warminster at this time, Edward Cromwell (no relation, I expect, of the Protector), in gaol for killing Robert Long, of Warminster. As there is no prosecution against him, "let Dr. Chafyn inquire and bail him to next assize if he see cause." Warminster inhabitants much troubled about their highways. 1639, presented both at sessions and assizes. Some of the dwellers, who had been at charges and paid, pray that the expense may not light altogether on them; let the recusants contribute. 1640, the Judges "take it ill" that Warminster has so slighted their orders about the roads; order for general rate, and warrants for the disobedient. But the difficulty was not readily settled, for nearly seventeen years later-1657-Chief Justice Glynn refers the raising and payment of this rate to two justices, Messrs. Watchell and Redout, as the overseers (Messrs. Thomas Butcher, Will. Chaundler, Christ. Willoughby, and Humfry Buckler) cannot get their money; they have paid it out of their own purses; yes, the workmen and the ploughs to repair.1

There are orders which show that which I can find no allusion to in any history, viz., the prevalence of the plague at Fisherton Anger, Salisbury, in 1646. At the summer assize of that year there was

1 The original petition of the overseers is as follows:-"That being chosen overseers for the amendment of the highwayes within in the parish aforesaid did according to the late ordinance receive a rate from the said parish confirmed and allowed by the Justices of this county for the repaire of the highwayes aforesaid whereupon they employed ploughes and workemen to doe the said service many persons wch yor petitioners paid out of their purses expectinge to receive againe from the parties wch promised to pay the same But since the settinge of the Parleyamt they have refused to pay what they promised expectinge to be freed from the same because that the ordinance for the amendment of the highwayes was not putt into an act." There may be a doubt whether "ploughs" indicates teams of horses. But there is no mention of stone or other material. Wiltshire folk then travelled on horseback, ladies on pillions. Carriages rare. The grass roads, where furrowed by carts or waggons, could be turned in by the plough; but there would be stone used in the streets of towns, and thus ploughs here may have the prior meaning. Note here, too, the ordinance of His Highness compared Iwith the Act of Parliament.