6 Recent Wiltshire Books, Pamphlets, and Articles, 



the decay of part of the body of the Church to take it down and re-build 

 it, as also to re-build the tower and steeple, apply for an order to enforce 

 payment of a rate. - 



1658. James Bartlett, of Devizes, deposes that one Bayley, of 

 Staflerton, came to him and told him that he was churchwarden, and 

 that for a long time they had had no prayer in their Church because 

 they were annexed to another place (Trowbridge), that the pulpit cloth 

 was in one man's hands, the communion table cloth in another man s 

 custody, and the silver bowls in the keeping of another, and the bell 

 was to be sold ; and he desired the examinant to buy the bell promising 

 that if should be called in question he would buy a new bell ; and in 

 July last the bell was brought to the informant's house, who paid to the 

 said Bayley £5 3s. for it. 



1660 and the following years. The old soldiers in the King's cause 

 come forward in large numbers to prefer their claims to pensions and 

 relief. 



1670. John Bushell, of Great Bedwyn, mercer, is indicted for making 

 and uttering brass and copper farthings, of which a hundred were only 

 equal in value to 16 pence. 



1670. Jane Townsend, of Latton, is charged with being a witch 

 because she had a teat or nipple on her body upon half-an-inch long, 

 which was supposed to be a witch's mark. Two persons depose that she 

 offered to teach their daughters to become witches by the following way ; 

 they were to go into Church and lie down by the font and forswear their 

 Christian names seven times, and then they would become witches. And 

 then if they made a picture of man or beast in clay and ran a red-hot 

 iron into it, that beast or man would be bewitched. 



1671. Simon Rolfe, clothier, of New Sarum, is indicted for coining 

 half-pence of which four were only equal to one penny; John Slade, of 

 Warminster, mercer, for coining farthings, of which four were onl\ equal 

 to one half-penny ; Francis Patient, of Westbury, and AVilliam Butche r, 

 of Warminster, for the like offence, and W illiam Newman, of Wilton, 

 weaver, for uttering halfpence. 



1681. It is presented that at Whaddon the games of " ( 'ulverholes 

 and "nine pins" are played on the Lord's Day. 



1689. Lists arc preserved of all the clergy who had taken the oathB, 



Pages 161 — 17") are taken up with tables of wages as fixed by quarter 

 sessions, oxtending from 1602 to 10Hf>. These are most elaborately 

 given for the work of artisans of all kinds, and for all the various 

 operations of agriculture. In 1608, for instance, it is ordered that 



" mowers of grasse by the days with meets and drinks shall not take of 



wages above v' 1 ., and without meate and drinke not above x' 1 .'* ; " men 

 laborers in haymakinge or grippinge of lento corne shall not take by the 

 daye with meate and drinke of wages above iiii' 1 .. and without meate and 

 drinke not above viii' 1 . " ; " women labourers . . . not above iii' 1 . and 

 vi 1 ." " Mowing of grass, for every acre by lugge not above x' 1 ., of barley 

 v 1 ., of oates iv' 1 . ; making of hay, for every acre by lugge not above ix' 1 . 



