A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



the lands of such men as Sir Gervase Clifton, of a capital value of 22,875 ; 

 they also comprised possessions like those of John Bingham of Hayton, who 

 owned two messuages and appurtenances worth 22 a year, household goods 

 valued at 10 i6j., and live stock of the value of 19 ioj. 198 Altogether 

 the estates of about seventy-four persons were sequestrated by i648, m and 

 various others were seized later as belonging to recusants or to Royalist 

 conspirators. 200 Of the seventy-four, a considerable number were below 

 500 in capital value, a circumstance which shows how widespread were 

 the results of the war. 



A considerable proportion of the estates thus forfeited belonged to the 

 inhabitants of Newark, or to persons who had taken refuge there previous to 

 the siege, and they afford opportunity for such a comparison of the possessions 

 of burgesses with yeomen as serves to suggest how much greater were the 

 comforts enjoyed by the former. Thus, a butcher and an apothecary of 

 Newark own each 40 of household goods, 201 while two husbandmen, 

 apparently no poorer than the burghers, own personalty to the value, the one 

 only of /*2O, the other of 2 4- The contrast, however, does not imply any 

 strong line of demarcation between landowners and citizens. The burghers 

 of Newark, like those of Nottingham, were frequently landowners. Christopher 

 Haslam, servant to an ironmonger, 202 was the owner of lands both in Notting- 

 hamshire and Lincolnshire : and the combination of tradesman and land- 

 owner seems to have been common. To these lesser land-holders, however, 

 the shock of the war must have been especially serious : and not only land- 

 lords but tenants suffered. The Calendars of the Committee for Com- 

 pounding give various instances of tenants who declared that they and their 

 forefathers had been on the land for generations, and were now disturbed or 

 ousted by the new landlords. 203 Complaints occur also of cattle-driving and 

 other oppressions. 204 



Further, the plague, which had been hanging about Nottinghamshire all 

 the century, was intensified by the evils of the war. It raged especially at 

 Newark, which had probably been overcrowded during the siege. A thousand 

 persons were said to have been swept away there during the last six months 

 of i646. 206 Hence a report in 1650 that Nottinghamshire was in a ' ruinous 

 condition ' 20G was not surprising. Nor even after the Civil War was the 

 county free from depressing influences. Various Nottinghamshire gentlemen 

 (including Colonel Hutchinson) were believed to be involved in the rising of 

 1663-4, and the plague had laid so firm a hold of the county that after 

 sweeping away one-third of the population of Newark in i665, 207 it revived 

 again in 1667, the last occasion, it is said, on which it appeared in 

 England. 208 



Despite all these drawbacks, Nottinghamshire seems to have recovered in 

 some degree from the poverty into which it had fallen previous to 1650. A 

 certain suspension of industry there must have been during the Civil War, 

 especially in mining, to judge from the statement in 1663 that the coalmines 



'" Cal. of Com. for Compounding, 1717. '" Ibid. 107-8. 1 Ibid. 741-2. 



wl Com. for Compounding, vol. ccxvi, 175-91. *" Ibid. vol. G, 201 (261). 



** e.g. at Littleborough and Shelford, Cal of Com. for Compounding, 2579, &c. 



104 e.g. at Misterton and Gringley, 1644 ; Com. for Advance of Money, 537. 



*" Cal. of Com. for Compounding, 1335. ** Ibid. 342. 



'"" W. D. Rastall, Hist, of Southwell, ii, 215. W8 C. Creighton, Epidemics In Britain, i, 691. 



292 



