A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



burgesses ; "* but in 1533 the corporation wrote to 

 Cromwell urging again their great charges, stating that 

 they had derived no benefit from past favours, and 

 begging that their arrears might be ' stalled.' Their 

 letter received small attention, and in 1537 matters 

 had got so much worse that the mayor in fear of a 

 process at the Exchequer, and seizure of the town's 

 liberties, had recourse to the merchant Nicholas 

 Dogra, called also Demagrine, who came to his tem- 

 porary relief and advanced 200 for the farm, receiv- 

 ing in security 173 West Hall, a locally noted tenement 

 which stood in Bugle Street on the site of the build- 

 ings formerly occupied by the grammar school. By 

 1549 the sum of 1,844 ls - ^d- was owing to the 

 Exchequer ; of this total the amount of 1,044 is. 6d. 

 was remitted in the following year on the corporation 

 entering into a bond for 1,000 to pay the remaining 

 800 at the rate of 100 a year. 176 In 1552 the 

 farm was reduced under certain conditions to 50, 

 and in consideration of the present poverty of the 

 town, ' as well on account of the repairs of the walls 

 and forts called " bulwerkes " now in a ruinous state 

 and demanding attention, as also on account of the 

 town being a frontier lying on the sea-coast towards 

 Normandy, France, and other southern ports,' all 

 arrears were also remitted. 177 Yet in September, 

 1561, the town was in debt to many persons in 

 various sums, and especially to John Caplen, who at 

 the request of the corporation undertook to receive 

 and administer all moneys that might be due to the 

 town within the next two years, and from them to 

 pay the fee-farm, officers' wages, and other ordinary 

 charges, to satisfy the other creditors, and ' of his 

 good nature and accustomed goodness' to be 'con- 

 tente that his own dette shalbe laste payed.' No 

 repairs were to be carried out for the town, or any 

 money transactions negotiated without cognizance of 

 John Caplen. 178 Loans from the burgesses in payment 

 of the farm not uncommonly occur. The conditions 

 of the reduction of the farm to 50, which were 

 confirmed by the last governing charter of l64o, 179 

 were that the petty customs should not have amounted 

 in any year to 200, that no ships called ' carracks of 

 Genoa' or 'galleys of Venice' should have visited the 

 port, and that a certificate accordingly should be sent 

 each year to the lords of the Treasury and the 

 barons of the Exchequer. Certificates of the amount 

 were regularly sent, but in 1803 an Act of Parliament 

 was passed I8 abolishing the payment of petty 

 customs to the corporation, and giving them instead 

 one-fifth of the port-dues to be received by commis- 

 sioners created under the new Act. But when on 

 9 November, 1804, the corporation transmitted a 

 certificate reciting this Act to the Treasury and 

 Exchequer, it was rejected for want of stating the 

 amount received in lieu of petty customs until four- 

 teen days afterwards another was forwarded giving 



OSBORNI. 



ermine and azure a cross 



Quarterly 



the required details. 181 The reduced farm of 50 

 was paid to the crown from the time of Edward VI 

 to the death of Charles I. It was sold under the 

 Commonwealth 29 September, 1650, together with 

 the fee-farm of the city of Hereford (42) by the 

 commissioners appointed for selling the fee-farm rents 

 of the late crown of England under the Act of the 

 then present Parliament, to Azariah Husband and his 

 heirs for 78 5 us. 8d. lla After the Restoration this, 

 with other crown properties, was resumed ; and on 

 20 October, 1674, was sold to Sir Robert Holmes. 183 

 In 1 68 1 it passed to John Garland and his heirs, 

 being sold and conveyed by the Trustees for Sale of the 

 Crown Fee-farm Rents. 184 It 

 was afterwards conveyed to 

 Thomas Osborne, first duke 

 of Leeds, in whose family it 

 remained till 1737, when it 

 was sold for 1,500 by Tho- 

 mas, duke of Leeds, great- 

 grandson of the above, to Ann, 

 countess of Salisbury, widow, 

 for the purpose of endowing 

 a charity school which she had 

 lately founded. 1 " By 1835 

 this settlement had been for 

 gotten, since the municipal 



corporation commissioners of that year conjectured 

 that the fee-farm rent of 40 2s, paid annually 

 to a charity called ' Hatfield's Charity ' might 

 be the remains of the old fee-farm transferred at 

 one time probably from the crown to the charity, 

 but could not find that anyone knew more of the 

 matter. Yet the connexion of the payment with 

 the ' Hatfield Charity School ' appears clearly in 

 the Journal of 28 October, l825. 186 At the end 

 of the petty customs certificate of Michaelmas, 1836, 

 the entry occurs : ' ordered that the Treasurer of the 

 Borough do pay to the Trustees of Hatfield's charity 

 the sum of 40 zs. the remainder of the fee-farm 

 rent, land tax deducted.' The origin of the payment 

 was rightly inferred, its direction still a matter of confu- 

 sion. A similar order to the above occurs 24 Novem- 

 ber, 1837. The payment is of course continued. 



The early history of the government of the town 

 can best be learnt from the history of the gild as de- 

 duced from the earliest gild ordinances, 187 for the gild 

 was, in the case of Southampton, the nurse of its cor- 

 poration. The earliest charter, that of Henry II, 

 shows that the ' men of Hanton,' that is the burgesses, 

 ' had their gild ' by the time of Henry I ; that is 

 from the beginning of the twelfth century. Some six 

 versions of the gild ordinances are extant, versions 

 made from time to time as changing circumstances 

 demanded, dated from the opening of the fourteenth 

 to the latter half of the seventeenth century, with 

 alterations running on a century later. 183 



W 4 Stat. Realm, Hi, 351-2. 



*76 Boke of Remembrances, fol. 37, \\b. 

 (Corp. MSS.). 



*'' Bond (among pardons) Audit House, 

 South t. 



'<7 The charter is enrolled, Pat. 6 Edw. 

 VI, pt. 6, m. 3, &c. The corporation 

 possesses an exemplification made at the 

 request of John Capelyn, mayor, and 

 Thomas My lie, recorder, dated 27 April, 

 7 Edw. VI. 



l ? B Boke of Remembrances, fol. 90 (Corp. 

 MSS.). 



>' 9 Yet the Town Journ. 3 Oct. 1656, 



states that Roger Pedley, the sheriff, was 

 compelled by writ of Exchequer to demand 

 a levy of 200 for the fee-farm. There 

 must have been some informality on the 

 town's part. 



180 Stat. Realm, 43 Geo. Ill, cap. 21. 



181 Town Journ. (Corp. MSS.), g Nov. 

 1804, &c. ; Rep. on Municipal Corps. 1835. 

 The certificate is still prepared in the 

 same way every year, and each gth of 

 November it is humbly signified in the 

 prescribed quarters that no ships called 

 'carracks of Genoa" .or 'galleys of 

 Venice ' have arrived at the port. 



508 



18> Counterpart D. of sale of Fee Farm 

 Rents, bdle. H, i, No. 17. 



183 Sale of Fee Farm Rents, Enrolments, 

 vol. 244, fol. 77 (Land Rev. Off.). 



184 Close, 33 Chas. II, pt. 14. No. 6. 



185 Ibid. II Geo. II, No. 16. 



186 Town Journ. (Corp. MSS.). 



18 7 See above, n. 45. 



188 The earliest version, which went by 

 the name of ' Paxbread,' is in French, and 

 probably dates from the early fourteenth 

 century. It is contained in the Oak 

 Book, one of the most interesting of the 

 town books. The next version is a free 



