SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



he could be ordered to return to his last place of settlement. A few years 

 later the inhabitants of Princes Risborough appealed against a blacksmith of 

 Missenden attempting to settle within their parish. At Aylesbury 4 was 

 paid for apprenticing a boy named Joseph Rash for seven years, but half the 

 sum was held over as security that he would not be chargeable to the parish 

 for the next year. 



Vagrants and beggars were a source of continual trouble, but these were 

 dealt with by the constables and not the overseers. In 1679 the poor of 

 Aylesbury ** were forbidden to beg ; if they were found begging the con- 

 stables were ordered to take them to the house of correction, and they were 

 to be struck off the list of recipients of parish relief. 



At Wendover an ale-house keeper lost his licence for allowing rogues 

 and vagabonds to lie in his barns and outhouses. Scotch pedlars and petty 

 chapmen, who wandered about the country in large numbers, were a 

 grievance, and orders were issued that they were to be publicly whipped 

 by the constables or tithing-men. 



In 1688 at the Easter sessions constables were ordered to put the laws 

 against vagrants into effect, since their numbers had increased and they 

 formed a danger to the country-side, threatening women left alone in houses 

 in lonely parts when their husbands and servants were away at work. 

 Besides losses by theft, people were also in great fear of acts of incendiarism 

 on the part of vagrants. 



Two years later orders were given to the petty constables as to the 

 necessity of keeping strict watch on strangers, and dealing with vagrants 

 according to the statutes. These orders showed that the house of correction 

 was becoming far more like a prison than had been the case formerly. 

 Ordinary vagrants without passes were of course to be whipped and sent to 

 their places of settlement. If this was not known, they were to be dis- 

 patched to the county gaol for work until they could be placed in service, 

 but ' incorrigible rogues and dangerous and not to be reformed ' were to be 

 taken before a justice of the peace and admitted to the house of correction. 

 There were houses of correction at Aylesbury, Wycombe, and Newport 

 Pagnel, and a fourth was provided at Buckingham in 1719, but was 

 abolished in less than twenty years. The governors 203 received 30 a vear 

 paid from the county rate, and were supervised by the justices, for in the 

 Michaelmas sessions in 1684, a 'grand inquest view' was ordered to inquire 

 whether the governor at Wycombe performed his duty. This consisted of 

 seeing that the able-bodied labourers who refused to place themselves in 

 service worked in an orderly manner so long as they were confined in the 

 house of correction. 



The removal of vagrants involved a great deal of expenditure, which fell 

 partly on each parish and partly on the county. The travellers who received 

 small payments at Wing throughout the seventeenth century must often have 

 been vagrants who were passing through the county to their place of settle- 

 ment. Early in the eighteenth century the justices complain of the extra- 

 ordinary charge for passing and conveying vagabonds and cripples. To the 

 constable of Little Brickhill alone 140 had been paid in 1708, and the 



** Quart. Sess. Rec. 



*" The post of governor might he held by a woman. Quart. Sess. Rec. Epiph. 1761. 



2 Si II 



