20 DORSET ASSIZES IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 



was often punished by death, pig-stealing Avas treated as 

 petty larceny. 



Three or four deeds of violence are recorded, which must 

 have made considerable stir in the county at the time of their 

 occurrence, and thus call for particular mention. When we 

 read in the Gaol Book for 1684 that Matthew Burt, charged 

 Avith murder, pleaded guilty to the homicide of John Colling- 

 don with a fowling piece, and that Burt had " Benefit of 

 Clergy," and except for branding went scot-free, we see 

 nothing remarkable in the entry. But when we know from 

 other records that Matthew Burt, a yeoman of Mapperton, 

 suffered from a load of debt and that his neighbour John 

 Collingdon was a bailiff, there naturally follows the con- 

 jecture that the bailiff was shot in an attempt to arrest Burt 

 for debt. An incident which happened just beyond the 

 Dorset border, at Crewkerne, suggests that the courts regarded 

 bailiff-shooting under such circumstances as an almost venial 

 offence. At Crewkerne Fair in 1597, as appears from some 

 proceedings in the Court of Chancery, a bailiff named Fox 

 tried to arrest Thomas Merefield, who shot and killed his 

 would-be captor without seiious consequence to himself. In 

 fact, Merefield duly received his pardon. But this was not 

 the end of the matter. Thirty-six years later, in 1633, some 

 members of Fox's famity contrived to have Merefield 

 arraigned for the murder at the Somerset Assizes, when the 

 Grand Jury ignored the bill, and the dead man's relatives 

 were promised imprisonment if they trovibled Merefield again. 

 It should be observed that neither Burt nor Merefield was in 

 a position to exercise influence in high places, and neither 

 was capable of raising a large sum of money for securing 

 favourable treatment. 



Next may be mentioned two highway robberies, one in 

 1674 and the other in 1696. In the former year the Exeter 

 carrier called " Mr. John Mathew," coming from London, 

 was stopped near Milborne St. Andrew by four men, who 

 took over £800 from the waggon and decamped. Mathew 

 followed the robbers until they told him that " hee should 



