78 



Extracts from the Records of the 



of an inch, was the punishment of a first offence, and life itself was 

 forfeit for any that " after do fall again into a roguish life." 



Licences to beg were expressely sanctioned by the law, and 

 entries of such grants figure in the Wiltshire Minutes : no explana- 

 tion is afforded of the grounds upon which these concessions were 

 made, but one applicant made out so good a case that he was 

 permitted to range " per totam comitatum." 



Illustrations abound of the multifarious penalties inflicted on 

 rogues and vagabonds. In at least one instance sentence of branding 

 the ear is passed upon a woman. Undertakings are entered into 

 by persons willing to afford employment to vagabonds for one whole 

 year, an engagement which was accepted in substitution for the 

 application of the hot ear-iron. Fines are inflicted on persons who 

 failed to punish vagabonds ; more that twenty persons were so fined 

 at the Epiphany Sessions, 24th Elizabeth : the lash is liberally and 

 impartially administered, and removals are conducted upon the usual 

 terms, of which the following is a sample : — 



" It is ordered that Willim. Tipping, prisoner in the gaole for a wandering 

 pson, and Alice, his wiffe, shalbe whipped, and sent to Coventrie, where the 

 said Tipping was born and last dwelt." 



This was all according to law, for the statute enjoined that this 

 valedictory attention should speed the parting guest on his home- 

 ward journey. 



For incorrigible rogues, the galleys were considered a fitting des- 

 tination, yet even there their memory was kept alive 1 in the county 

 from which they were committed. 



1 Mr. Hamilton states that this vote towards the maintenance of persons 

 so sentenced, was merely a compliance with a claim from the lords of the 

 council. He points out that Macaulay is inaccurate in representing the galleys 

 as a novelty first introduced to the notice of Englishmen in 1690. The passage 

 occurs in chap. xvi. vol. iii., of the History of England. "As the line of ships 

 turned the lofty cape which overlooks Torquay, an incident happened which, 

 though slight in itself, greatly interested the thousands who lined the coast. 

 Two wretched slaves disengaged themselves from an oar and sprang overboard. 

 One of them perished. The other, after struggling more than an hour in the 

 water, came safe to English ground and was cordially welcomed by a population 

 to which the discipline of the galleys was a thing strange and shocking." 



