A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



are the old almshouses, built by John Thorp, with 

 this inscription on a panel : — 



Aedificavit charltas 

 Inhabitabit Paupcrtaa 

 Ornabit honestas 

 Durabit omnis aetas 

 £x Dono Johanis 

 Thorp arm ano 



i638. 



Near them is the school, incorporating a good 17th- 

 century hall, and associated with William Law the 

 celebrated divine, and on the road to Apethorpe is 

 the public library founded by him. Over its door is 

 this inscription : ' Books of piety are here lent to any 

 persons of this or the neighbouring towns.' 



In Park Street, not far from the school, stands The 

 Fisheries, a house occupied by Dr. Lewis ; another 

 modern house on the Stamford Road belongs to 

 Mr. George Miles. There is in the village a 

 Wesleyan chapel built in 1828,3 Congregationnlist 

 chapel built in 1846, a Calvinist chapel and a Zion 

 chapel now used as a loft. 



King's ClifFe was at one time the most considerable 

 town in this district and had a market on Tuesdays, 

 now long discontinued, and a three days' fiir on the 

 vigil, day, and morrow of St. Luke, especially for its 

 own turning ware, which flourished until about thirty 

 years ago. Both market and fair and permission to 

 take toll on those occasions as was done in other 

 parts of the kingdom were originally granted by 

 Henry IIL' They were discontinued in the 15th 

 century when King's ClifFe passed through a period 

 of depression owing partly to disastrous fires and 

 partly perhaps to the fact that it was no longer a 

 royal residence, but remained in the king's possession 

 and had no private owner to interest himself in its 

 prosperity. In a survey taken for Henry VI by 

 petition of the inhabitants in 1439, miny of the 

 cottages were returned as waste,' and in consequence 

 Henry reduced the ferm from [(iz to £\o for ten 

 years because of the waste and decay of the place.' 

 An extensive fire took place in 1462, when over a 

 hundred houses were consumed, the ferm being en- 

 tirely remitted for two years on this account.* In 

 1604, however, James I for the relief of the poor of 

 the town renewed Henry Ill's grant of a market 

 every week on Tuesd.iy, and a fair there on the vigil, 

 day, and morrow of St. Luke the evangelist.' Both 

 market and fair are accounted for in the Parliamentary 

 survey of King's Cliffe in 1650, but the profits are 

 small, only £z in all to the lord of the manor.^ 

 Morton, whose history was published in 1712, places 

 King's ClifFe in his list of market-towns, ' though scarce 

 thought worthy the name.' ' The fair for one day 

 only was held until the last h.alf of the 19th century. 

 One curious privilege in connexion with it was that 

 any house during its continuance by merely placing a 

 bough outside the door might become a licensed 

 house for the sale of beer, etc. Beer tasters were ap- 

 pointed by the vestry meeting the day before the fair 

 to investigate the quality of the beer sold. 



Another sign of the old time prosperity of King's 

 ClifFe is the number of tradesmen's tokens, chiefly 

 belonging to the 17th century, which still exist. 

 One, dated 1659, belonged to Thomas Law, grocer, 

 the father of William Law, author of The Serious 

 Call? 



William Law (d. 1761) was born here in 1686. 

 He showed signs of talent in childhood, and entered 

 Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as a sizar in 1 705, 

 became fellow and took orders in 171 I. He appears 

 to have held a curacy in London, but on the accession 

 of George I in 1 7 14, he refused to take the oaths 

 of allegiance and abjuration and so deprived himself 

 of all preferment, in spite of the vain efforts of his 

 friend Dean Sherlock, who more than once offered 

 him a living. From 1727-37 he was tutor and 

 domestic chaplain to Gibbon, the father of the 

 historian. His interest in his native place was con- 

 stant, and in 1727 he founded a school of fourteen 

 girls at King's ClifFe ; in 1 740 he retired there for 

 the remainder of his life, carrying out in his mode of 

 living the principles he had laid down in his most 

 famous work, published in 1728, j4 serious Call to a 

 Devout and Holy Life, adapted to the State and Condition 

 of all Orders of Christians. Law was a man of great 

 theological and literary activity, and his letter (1717) 

 to Bishop Hoadly is the best statement of the high- 

 church position made in that age. His answer to 

 Mandcvilie (1723) is the best of the replies to the 

 famous ' Fable of the Bees.' Spoken of even by 

 Gibbon with reverence, responsible by his advice for 

 much of the early career of the Wesleys, he was at 

 once non-juror, high churchman, a keen polemic 

 reasoner, and a believer in the 'inner light,' with a 

 strain of mysticism which increased under the in- 

 fluence of Jacob Behmen, whose works he edited in 

 1737. To him Dr. Johnson's first religious con- 

 victions were due ; the Wesleys, and afterwards 

 Cardinal Newman, owed much to his teaching ; and 

 while memorable as an exponent of ideas in strong 

 opposition to the matter-of-fact tendencies of his time 

 (e.g. his attack on Warburton in 1737), his great 

 influence on English religious life is chiefly due to 

 the lofty spirituality of his writings and the saintlines? 

 of his personal char.icter. 



The tenants of King's ClifFe had a common in the 

 forest of Rockingham in the bailiwick of Clive. 

 About 1229 they complained to the king that Hugh 

 de Nevill, then forester of the bailiwick, did not permit 

 them to have it as they had been accustomed, and he 

 was ordered to allow them to do so.' There appear 

 to have been further difficulties, for an inquisition was 

 taken concerning the matter later on in the same 

 reign,'" when it was found that the men of King's 

 ClifFe ought to have common pasture in the demesne 

 woods of the king in the bailiwick of Clive. The 

 tenants of Duddington petitioned Edward III in 1361 

 that they should not have to pay ferm for a place 

 called Duddington Short in the forest of Rockingham 

 on which the men of King's Clifte had common pas- 

 ture." In 1463 the right of common within the 



^ Close, 33 Hen. Ill, m. 5 ; Pai. (52 

 Hen. Ill, m. 28. The fair was granted 

 originally for the vigil, day, and morrow of 

 St. James the Apostle, not St. Luke. 



» Chan. Incj. p.m. 18 Hen. VI, No. 



4-- 



3 Pat. 18 Hen. VI, pt. ii, m. 7. 

 * Ibid. 2 Edw. IV, pt. ii, m. 22. 



' Pat. I Jas. I, pt. ix, m. 16. 



« Aug. Otf. Pari. Surv. No. 38. 



' Nat. Hill, of Northann, 27. 



' Northanis N. and Q. ii, 206, and Diet, 

 Nat. Biog. 



' Close 14 Hen. Ill, m. 21 </. Hugh de 

 Nevill had more control over Ring's 

 Clifle than the foresters of the baiUiwick 



580 



of Clive generally had. He accounted 

 for its ferm instead of the sheriff or the 

 'men of Clive ' as usual, and for the re- 

 pair of the royal house (Pipe R. 2 Jo.hn 

 and following years). 



"> Misc. Inq. Hen. Ill, file 5, No. 24. 



" Close, 35 EJw. Ill, m. 13. 



