SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



lights. For instance on 9 April, 1626, a rate of id. in the pound was ordered 

 throughout the county to relieve the distress in Gateshead, South Shields, and 

 Whickham, caused by the plague. Under 16 April, 1634, we find that a 

 warrant was issued against Catherine Meaburne of South Shields for calling 

 one Thomas Hopper a ' heretik and a hell ratchet.' For her offence she was 

 handed over to be dealt with by the officials of the Consistory Court in the 

 Galilee at Durham, and she had to confess her offence in the chapel of South 

 Shields on three successive Sundays. At the same sessions four men were 

 accused of having abused the constable and the watch at South Shields. 

 They were ordered to be flogged in public at the cart's tail and driven round 

 South Shields market. 



Probably offences quite as serious as these in the eyes of the justices were 

 the crimes of men such as Thomas Waltler, who kept a common alehouse and 

 confessed to having played cards and got drunk in the same. They ordered 

 that the said alehouse should be forthwith suppressed and Thomas was 

 fined 5J. This was in January, 1644, and ten years later we find the justices 

 attempting to convert a recusant, who rudely, if truly, told them that unless 

 they had more judgement in law than in divinity they were ignorant people. 

 Of course the justices were keen Sabbatarians, and the godless practices of 

 the Salters who pursued their calling on the Sunday caused them much 

 distress. At the Midsummer Sessions in 1644 they forbade Sunday work 

 and ordered the churchwardens to see that the order was obeyed. 



Sometimes the superstitions and folUes of the people are vividly por- 

 trayed by an entry in the records of the Court of High Commission or the 

 Consistory Court. Belief in witchcraft and magic lingered long in the north. 

 We hear of a ' wyseman ' who came under Bishop Kellaw's notice in 

 1312,^ and there was a curious case before the Consistory Court in 1621 in 

 which Catherine Richardson of South Shields was detected for a common 

 user of sorcery and witchcraft. She had told the mother of a sick child that 

 she could do nothing without inspection of the child's water. Then she 

 declared that the child was taken with a planet and prescribed a drink made 

 from herbs and ' other materials.' She escaped lightly, being ordered to 

 confess her offence publicly in church and from henceforth to cast no waters 

 nor minister to any sick persons.** 



Occasionally a case is ludicrous, as when in 16 19 Elizabeth Muschamp 

 deposed that ' four men rode on a stang, publishing that she, the said Eliza- 

 beth, had beat her husband and broken his head.' Her husband denied that 

 he ever said she beat him, but a woman was produced who deposed that he 

 had placed her hand on a bump on his head which he said his wife did. 

 Perhaps Elizabeth should receive the benefit of the doubt, but the picture 

 only confirms the impression derived from the cases in the High Commission 

 Court.^ Roughness, brutality, and too often infidelity marked the home-life 

 of the people in Durham as elsewhere in the seventeenth century. 



Although the actual records of the dean and chapter halmotes in the 

 sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries have been lost, we know that such 



' Reg. Pa!. Dun. (Rolls Ser.), i, i86. 



' Cf. a curious entry in Surtees, ///V/. of Dur. n, 123. '1649. ^°^ ^ grave for a witch 6d. For 

 tr^'ing the witches £\ 5/. od.' (From Gateshead Parish Books.) 

 ' The records are printed in Surtees Soc. xxxiv. 



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