30 DORSET ASSIZES IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 



A perusal of the Assize Books leaves the general impression 

 that a great part of the inhabitants of Dorset in the 17th 

 century were addicted to crime, drunkenness, or other vice, 

 or were submerged in poverty ; but there is at least the 

 redeeming fact that those in power fought strenuously, 

 according to their lights, against all these evils, and such 

 records as these serve to remind us of how much the present 

 generation owes to the improvements in social conditions 

 effected, little by little, in past centuries. 



