26 DORSET ASSIZES IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 



preferred to choose their own apprentices, and objected to 

 the coercion applied by the overseers. Henry Stone, of Min- 

 terne, was paid 40s. for taking from the parish a boy who 

 turned out to be a bad character. He stole £5 from his master, 

 and was in consequence burned in the hand and put in prison. 

 Stone was then ordered to pay back the 40s. to the parish, 

 and the boy was to remain in prison until the parish found 

 him another master. Refusals to take such apprentices 

 were evidently justifiable in some cases. 



When roads or bridges fell into disrepair, the authority 

 of the Assize Court was often employed to enforce the duty of 

 putting them in order. Both owners and occupiers of land 

 had a custom, when troubled with surplus water, of diverting 

 water courses into highways, the consequences being decidedly 

 unpleasant for travellers, and the offenders, whatever their 

 social status, were promptly called to account. The 

 responsibility for the repair of bridges was sometimes a 

 delicate question, depending partly on ancient custom. In 

 or before 1636 there had been a process against the 

 Hundreds of Badbury and Cogdean for the repair of 

 Julian Bridge. In 1647 the inhabitants of Wareham 

 were presented at the Assizes for not repairing the south 

 bridge of their town, " being a very great bridge con- 

 sisting of seaven arches and of a very great length," and 

 later the Wareham people petitioned that the work might be 

 done by the county. An enquiry into the matter was to be 

 made by two gentlemen of the Grand Jury. In the same 

 year a sum of £80 was to be raised by the county of Dorset to 

 repair the " Common bridge over a great river near Yeovil," 

 broken down by soldiers during the Civil War, whereby the 

 lives of travellers had been endangered, some of them falling 

 into the river. It is added that the road served by the 

 bridge is the great road running from the West to the City of 

 London. Other County bridges referred to are Craford 

 Bridge (in 1640) and Stocking Bridge (in 1641). There is 

 also mention of a few parish bridges, viz. : Julian Bridge and 

 Fivebridges in Sherborne Hundred, Hossey Bridge in Manston, 



