•'JACK OF NEWBURY'' 



157 



INSCRIPTION. NEWBURY 

 CHURCH. 



knowu iu the town as u man of intemperate habits, 

 and upon whom imprisonment in Reading Gaol had 

 failed to produce any beneficial effect, was fixed in 

 the stocks for drunkenness and dis- 

 orderly conduct at Divine service in 

 the parish cliurch. Twenty-six years 

 had elapsed since the stocks had last 

 been used, and their reappearance 

 created no little sensation and amuse- 

 ment, several hundreds of persons 

 being attracted to the spot where 

 they were fixed. The sinful rag man 

 was seated upon a stool, and his legs 

 were secured in the stocks at a few 

 minutes past one. He seemed any- 

 thing but pleased with the laughter and derision of 

 the crowd. Four hours having passed, he was released. 

 It is impossible to escape Jack of Newbury in this 

 the scene of his greatness. "John Smalwoode the 

 elder, alias John Wynchcombe," as he describes him- 

 self in his last will and testament, in 1519, was the 

 most prominent of the clothworkers in the reigns of 

 the Seventh and Eighth Henrys. He is perhaps 

 best described in the words of a pampldet published 

 towards the close of the sixteenth century : — " He 

 was a man of merrie disposition and honest conversa- 

 tion, was wondrous well beloved of rich and poore, 

 especially because in every place where he came he 

 would spend his money with the best, and was not 

 any time found a churl of his purse. Wherefore, 

 being so good a companion, he was called of olde and 

 younge ' Jacke of Newberie,' a man so generally 



