Wiltshire Quarter Sessions. 325 



In the appendix^ too, is exhibited a list of some place-names 

 mentioned in the minutes between the year 157i and the end of 

 the reign. 



III. — Badgers. 



If the scope of an enquiry into the nature of the transactions 

 which occupied the attention of Her Majesty's justices in quarter 

 sessions assembled were limited to the first score or so of pages of 

 the earliest extant minute book, the single word " Badgers " would 

 suffice for an answer. 



These dealers in victuals have not lacked recognition in the pages 

 of this Magazine — they have been described by Mr. Carrington/ 

 Canon Jackson,^ and Mr. Ravenhill/ the last-named o£ whom has 

 transcribed at length a petition from the inhabitants of Bath for 

 the grant to two persons therein named of licences to act as badgers. 



Although the offences of " forestalling regrating, and ingrossing ■" 

 do not present themselves to the general reader as attractive subjects 

 for study and discussion, yet it may be useful to recall the definition 

 of a badger, given in old law dictionaries. " Badger,''^ says the 

 English version of Les Termes de la Ley, " is used with us for one 

 that is licensed to buy corn or other victuals in one place and carry 

 them to another — and such a one is exempted in the statute made 

 in the fifth and sixth of Edward VI., c. 14, from the punishment of 

 an Ingrosser within the statute." 



Under this Act of King Edward VI. it was within the com- 

 petence of any three justices of the peace to licence a badger — • 

 but to all appearance this latitude was considered too large, for by 

 the Act, 5 Elizabeth, cap. 13, the power of licensing was restricted 

 to the court of quarter sessions alone. 



No applicant was eligible for a licence unless he were thirty years 

 of age, a householder, and married : the penalty for trading without 

 a licence was five pounds, a limit which seems practically to have 

 set the measure of the bail (entered indifferently as \l and cs) which 



1 Vol. vii., pp. 13, 14 



2 Vol. xiv., p. 215. 

 ^ Vol. xviii., pp. 156-7. 



