SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



of little real avail in checking freedom of action ; the apprenticing laws 

 and the rules of craft gilds were frequently broken and the statute of main- 

 tenance and liveries disregarded. 200 The system of corn engrossing practised 

 by officers of the ports gave rise to grievous complaints from farmers ; 201 and 

 in December, 1583, a miscellaneous collection of presentments were made 

 before the mayor and jurats of Rye, including common absentees from church, 

 users of pots and other measures unlawful, forestallers, regrators and engrossers, 

 persons indulging in quarrellings and frays, householders for having wooden 

 chimneys, victuallers for keeping idle and poor people in their houses to 

 drink and play unlawful games, and people who broke the sumptuary laws, 302 

 and there are similar presentments for other parts of the country. 203 



At the same time the period was certainly an age of increasing activity on 

 the part of the local authorities the churchwardens and overseers of parishes 

 were taking the position left vacant by the decay of the manorial organiza- 

 tion. The manuscripts of the corporation of Rye are full of a sense of 

 responsibility not only for the material but also for the moral welfare of the 

 town ; 20 * in 1580 the churchwardens and sidesmen, who had been obliged to 

 present certain persons for drunkenness, whose ' estates were not able to bear 

 the charge of presentment in the Spiritual Court,' prayed the mayor and his 

 brethren that ' no taverns or victualling houses shall suffer any of those persons 

 to drink either in or at the doors of their houses under a penalty,' m and in 

 1599 the inhabitants of Lewes petitioned the justices to refuse to license any 

 ale-house within the borough or the parish of St. Mary Westout, except in 

 open court, and at the request of the constables and fellowship. 206 The same 

 sense of responsibility is manifest in the care of the poor, a considerable 

 number of charitable bequests date from the close of the century, 207 and the earl 

 of Dorset founded the large almshouse at East Grinstead known as Sackville 

 College, in i6o8. 208 Between 1581 and 1616 numerous appeals were addressed 

 by villages on the Pelham estates for leave for widows or aged labourers to 

 build cottages for themselves upon the lord's waste. 809 In these and in the 

 case in which the mayor and jurats of Hastings licensed a decayed freeman of 

 the port to beg for a year in Rye and Winchelsea, 210 there is perhaps some 

 trace of a desire to shift responsibility on to other shoulders, but Hastings at 

 least professed itself ' alwaes reddy to performe (the same) towards such as 

 resort in like manner from you to us,' and that such outside help was 

 occasionally given voluntarily is clear from the fact that in January, 1597, 

 when Rye was visited, apparently, by famine, Ashford sent the sum of 5 

 ' towardes the releavynge of the poore saintes of God amongst you.' 2U 



A further impetus was give to the energy and sense of responsibility of 

 local authorities by the famine of the middle of the seventeenth century. So 



100 Hiit. MSS. Com. Rep. xiii, App. pt. iv, 45, 48, 60 ; and Memo. R. Hil. 9 Eliz. rot. 98, 99 ; Hil. 

 43 Eliz. rot. 125 ; and Mich. 43 Eliz. rot. 118. 



*" Cal. ofS. P. Dam. 1591-4, p. 362 ; cf. also Hut. MSS. Com. Rep. xiii, App. pt. iv, 29, for the state of 

 famine to which Rye was almost reduced by attempts to regulate the corn trade. 



*" Hiit. MSS. Com. Rep. xiii, App. pt. iv, 84. 



2(8 Memo. R. East. 9 Eliz. rot. 85, 88, 919 ; Lay Subsidy R. ]f|. 



m e.g. Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xiii, App. pt. iv, 45. ** Ibid. 74. 



106 Horsfield, Hist, of Levies, \, 194. 



*" Proc. of Commissioners for Charitable Uses Inq. bdle ii, No. 3 ; bdle. xvii, No. 1 5 ; bdle. xii, 

 No. 1 2 ; and Dep. bdle. ix, No. 7. 



106 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. vii, App. 43-4. *" Add. MSS. ^o^, passim. 



210 Suss. Arch. Call, xii, 105-6. "' Hiit. MSS. Com. Rep. xiii, App. pt. iv, 113. 



2 193 25 



