142 " Justice in Warminster in the Olden Time" 



allowinge of 2 pecks out of every sack of barley boug-lit and sold to 

 be served unto the use of the poore/' Supervisors of markets to be 

 appointed to see and observe what corn is brought and bought and 

 sold, &c., and allowance for use of poor duly observed. Justices of 

 the peace desired to observe their ironthly meetings ; to suppress 

 needless or unlicensed alehouses, and those which sold with lesser 

 measure than statutable. Bakers to make their bread according to 

 assize. " Constables do your duty or beware.""^ 



In the following year, in Cornwall, an endeavour was made to 

 stop malting altogether, on account of the high price of corn. 



Then there is an order, 31st August, 1648, to relieve the sufferers 

 by the fire at Ramsbury, " 14th June, last past." There happened 

 "in the same towne a sudden hideous and devouring fire wch. in 

 very short tyme consumed and buryed up the habitations of six score 

 and tenn families wth. most of their goodes to the value of £15,000 

 att the least." Orders and orders. Goods and cattle, constables and 

 riotous folk, poor and heiresses, all come under the purview of my 

 lords the Queens's justices of assize, without respect of persons. 

 Robert Maundrell (March, 1672) is to bring Johanna Mortimore, 

 '' a person of very considerable fortune of about the age of twelve 

 years, whom he has unlawfully taken away in the highway, before 

 the justices at the sign of the Bear, at Marlborough, and not en- 

 deavour to marry her or permit her to be married till she attains 

 fourteen years." 



But time and patience fail. The two exceptions to assizes of this 

 county being held at Salisbury in those days, already alluded to, 

 were those of the summer of 1642, when they were held at Devizes, 

 (21st of July, King and Commons at daggers,) and the summer 

 of 1666, at Warminster. The latter was the year of the Great 

 Plague, which raged at Winchester and Salisbury, and so circuit, with 

 due caution, went to Andover and Warminster. The judges were 

 Sir John Keeling and Sir John Archer. History is not altogether 

 pleasant upon the former, with his grand cut of robe and gold chain, 

 a martinet, and rough of tongue. Sir Roger de Coverley and his 

 little speech would have been extinguished. Lord Clarendon might 

 well doubt seven months before he placed such a man at the head 



