Part 8

In the year 1341 the parish was assessed at £2 16s. 0d., but the reason assigned for the low assessment was that there had been great storms, want of sheep-stock, and a surrender of the land held by tenants. In 1379 a valuation of the manor is thus mentioned:—“Capital messuage, nothing (this would be the Court, or manor-house); water-mill (the old manor or Court mill), ten shillings; fisheries of two vivaries, three shillings; three caracutes of land (or as much as three teams of oxen could plough in the year), as averaging £1 18s.” Three acres of meadow is set down as worth, when carried, three shillings. The verbiage of the park was valued at three shillings and fourpence. The assized rents of free tenements amounted to £6 16s. 2d., and the pleas and perquisites of the Court (held by the prior at the Court-house) at two shillings. In 1390 the rents of Madeley, including a _ferm_ of coals, and the pleas and fines of the Court, were said to yield £22 18s. 0d. This _ferm_ of coals was probably that granted by the prior in 1322 to Walter de Caldbrook for six shillings.

In the sixteenth century the rental of the manor was returned at £39 18s. 8½d. At the same time—that is in 1534–5—the rectorial tithes are set down at £2, and the vicar’s income at £5 5s. In 1693 an assessment made for Madeley, by order of the justices of the peace, James Lewis, balf., George Weld, and Thos. Crompton, of 4s. 6d. in the £, from sixty-four persons, produced £149 1s. 4d. In this assessment the name of Sarah Wolfe occurs sixth on the list. In 1698 an assessment of 3s. 6d. in the £, by order of Richard Littlehales, balf., and Ralph Browne, from fifty-two persons, produced £112 5s. 0d. In this assessment the iron, coal, and lime works paid £55 14s. 0d. of the above sum. In 1704 an assessment of 4s. 6d. in the £, from forty-six persons, paid £149 to which the iron, coal, and lime works contributed £84. The sum paid in on the 27th of March of the same year for 1697, for window-tax, was £8 14s.; the tax for births, deaths, &c., for the same year, was £4 18s. 4d., for 1698, £4 1s. 7d., and for the following year, £3 5s. 6d. In the same year the land-tax produced £27 14s. 6d. In 1670 the window-tax was £8 6s. 0d. In 1671 the land-tax produced £55 0s. 0d. In 1672 the window-tax was £8 0s. 2d. In 1704 the sum realized for windows had risen to £10 17s. 6d., and that for births, deaths, and marriages to £5 12s. 0d. In 1676 the land-tax paid £36 19s. 4d., for the first quarter, 24th July; for the second quarter, 23rd October, the same; and for the third quarter (paid March 27, 1675), the same; the sum for the fourth quarter was also the same. In 1675 two sums, £31 9s. 8d., and £63 8s. 6d., were paid in for land-tax, and £16 2s. 2d. the following March. On the 4th of May, 1706, “John Boden paid in full of ye last year’s land-tax, £36 17s. 0d.” The fourth quarterly payment of the poll for Madeley, made April 15, 1695, was £14 14s. 6d.

We pass over payments for intervening years, and come to 1709. In July of that year the first and second quarterly payments of the land-tax were each £36 19s. 4d.; for the third quarter, £37 8s. 4d., and for the last quarter, £36 10s. 4d. The first and second quarterly payments in full amounted to £73 18s. 8d. In 1702 a survey of the lordship of Madeley showed there were twenty-seven tenants, holding 2073 acres; that the yearly value was £1021 10s. 0d.; also that there were upon the land 3369 trees, and sixteen loads of wood, the value of which by purchase was set down at £17,366 9s. 4d. In 1725 a case was prepared by the vicar and churchwardens, after a vestry-meeting had been held, for the opinion of counsel on the question of the right of the vicar to receive tithe of wood cut down by the lay impropriator. The case set forth that “the vicars of the other twenty-two parishes in the franchise of the priory enjoyed tithes of wood as small tithes, excepting in a few instances, and that the vicar of Madeley has from time to time received the tithes of hay, clover, &c., which are usually esteemed great tithes. But hitherto no tithes of wood have been paid at Madeley within memory of living witnesses, except that about thirty years since the late vicar received one shilling as a composition from the tenant of the impropriator.”

Counsel (Thos. Browne, of the Inner Temple), in reply, says Madeley was appropriated to the priory of Wenlock at the same time as Stoke St. Milburgh—22nd March, 1343—and yet the vicar of Stoke receives tithe-wood, and thinks that the smoke-penny to the vicar is strong evidence in favour of his being entitled to the tithe of wood so used, because that payment comes in lieu of such wood; but it must be admitted that the impropriator is entitled to all the tithes of a vicar, unless such vicar shows usage or endowment to support the demand as to such great tithe.

The counsel’s opinion seems to have left the question pretty much in the same state as before, and that the vicar and churchwardens did not establish their claim is shown by subsequent assessments and by the report of the Tithe Commissioners (1848), who said all woodlands are by prescription or other lawful means exempt from tithe.

The appropriation of the rent-charge in lieu of tithes in the parish took effect in 1847, and it may be interesting to add that after various meetings and inquiries it was found that by prescription or other lawful means all the woodlands, containing in estimated statute measure 200 acres, well known by metes and bounds, were absolutely free from tithes; also all gardens annexed to houses.

It was also found that 267 acres of the Court Farm were covered from render of small tithes in kind by prescriptive or customary payments in lieu thereof to the vicar, and 233 acres of the Windmill Farm by payment of 5s. 3½d.; the Broad Meadow, containing twenty-two acres, by payment of ninepence; the Hales, seventeen acres, by payment of fivepence; the Bough Park, twenty acres, and Rushton Farm (Park House), twenty-six acres, by payment of 10½d.; part of Court Farm (J. and F. Yates, proprietors), and six other acres, by payment of twopence. The quantity subject to tithes amounted to 2800 acres, 2000 being arable, and 800 as meadow or pasture.

Finding also that the average value of tithes for the seven years preceding Christmas, 1835, did not represent the sum which ought to be the basis for a permanent commutation, the Tithe Commissioner awarded as follows: to Sir Joseph H. Hawley, impropriator, of Leybourn Grange, Kent, £115 10s., by way of rent-charge; and £226 to the vicar for the time being, instead of all the remaining unmerged tithes of hay and small tithes, arising from the lands of the said parish. The valuation was by William Wyley, upon wheat, barley, and oats, as under:—

Wheat 7s. 0¼d. 32,427,300. Barley 3s. 11½d. 57,517,590. Oats 2s. 9d. 82,787,879.

The great-tithes have since been purchased from Sir Joseph Hawley for Ironbridge church, now a rectory.

SCARCITY OF WHEAT IN MADELEY IN 1795.

The system of farming and the state of the laws regarding the importation of grain were such down to the period we refer to that the country was at the mercy of the viscisitude of the seasons, and if these were adverse nothing less than a partial or a general famine was the result, and it sometimes happened that the use of an extra ounce or two of bread was grudged if not considered sinful. Thus, an old writer commenting upon the scarcity of grain in the above year, censured the use of tea on the ground that it led to the use of bread and butter. He says:—

“I find, July 29th, that ‘in the parish of Madeley, Salop, there are 924 families; and since the use of Tea is becoming so prevalent, on a moderate calculation each family consumes three and a half pounds of flour each week more than formerly, by instituting a fourth meal each day. In days of yore, Breakfast, Dinner and Supper were esteemed sufficient, but now it must be Breakfast, Dinner, _Tea_ and Supper, which wastes both Meal and Time, and makes a difference each week in the parish of Madeley of 3234 lbs. of flour.’”

In that same year, on the ninth of July, a meeting of numerous gentlemen, farmers, millers, and tradesmen was held at the Tontine, on “the alarming occasion of the scarcity of corn and dearness of all kinds of other provisions,” and a committee was appointed for the immediate collection of contributions and the purchase of such grain as could be procured, to be distributed to the necessitous at a reduction of one fourth, or nine shillings for twelve. The wants of the poor were described as being beyond what they had at any former time experienced, and according to the best accounts that could be collected the quantity of grain of all sorts in the country was very far short of the consumption before harvest. Many families in Madeley were short of bread, and the colliers were only prevented rising by assurances that gentlemen of property were disposed to contribute liberally to their relief as well as to adopt measures for obtaining from distant parts, such aid as could be procured. The committee directed 2,000 bushels of Indian corn to be sent for from Liverpool, to meet immediate requirements, but such were the murmurs of the poor according to a letter from Richard Reynolds to Mr. Smitheman, that it was impossible to say what would be the consequences, and the writer adds:—

“I should not be surprised if they applied in a body at those houses where they expected to find provisions, or from which they thought they ought to be relieved. They already begin to make distinctions between those whom they consider as their benefactors, and those whom (as George Forester expresses it in the annexed letter) are at war with their landlords; and I fear those whom they consider as deserting them in their distress, would not only incur their disapprobation, but might be the next to suffer from their resentment. I therefore the more readily attempt to fulfil my appointment by recommending thee in the most earnest manner to send by the return of the post to Richard Dearman at this place, who is appointed treasurer on the present occasion, a bill for such a sum as thou shalt think proper to contribute, and at the same time to write to thy servant at the West Coppice to give notice to thy tenants, (as G. Forester has to his) and especially to William Parton of Little Wenlock, that it is thy desire that he and they should conform to the general practice and deliver immediately all his wheat to the committee, at twelve shillings per bushel, for the use of the poor. And if there is any wheat, barley, beans, or peas, at the West Coppice, or elsewhere in thy possession or power, I recommend thee to order it to be sent without delay to the Committee; and then if the colliers, &c., should go in a body, or send, as I think more likely a deputation to thy house, thy having so done, and thy servant shewing them thy order for so doing, as well as thy contributing liberally as above proposed, will be the most likely means to prevent the commencement of mischief, the end of which, if once began, it is impossible to ascertain.”

The letter goes on to state that the following sums had been subscribed: George Forester, £105. Cecil Forester, £105. J. H. Browne, £105. the Coalbrookdale Company, £105. and John Wilkinson, £50. In addition to this the writer, Richard Reynolds, and J. H. Browne had consented to advance £700. each to be repaid out of the corn sold at the reduced price.

Mr. Reynolds concludes by saying, “such is the urgency of the temper of the people, that there is not a day to lose if we are desirous to preserve the poor from outrage, and most likely the country from plunder, if not from blood.”

Periods of distress and panic arising from scarcity were not unfrequent when wages were stationary, or comparatively so. Great changes had taken place during the periods previously described. First, during feudal times, here and elsewhere the great body of peasantry was composed of persons who rented _small farms_, seldom exceeding twenty or thirty acres, and who paid their rent either in kind or in agricultural labour and services performed on the demesne of the landlord: secondly, of _cottagers_, each of whom had a small croft or parcel of land attached to his dwelling, and the privilege of turning out a cow, or pigs, or a few sheep, into the woods, commons, and wastes of the manor. During this period, the population derived its subsistence immediately from the land;—the landowner from the produce of his demesne, cultivated partly by his domestic slaves, but principally by the labour of the tenants and cottiers attached to the manor; the tenants from the produce of their little farms; and the cottiers from that of their cows and crofts, except while working upon the demesne, when they were generally fed by the landlord. The mechanics of the village, not having time to cultivate a sufficient quantity of land, received a fixed allowance of agricultural produce from each tenant.

Under the above system, not only the little farmer, but also the humblest cottager, drew a very considerable portion of his subsistence directly from the land. His cow furnished him with what is invaluable to a labourer,—a store of milk in the summer months; his pig, fattened upon the common and with the refuse vegetables of his garden, supplied him with bacon for his winter consumption—and there were poultry besides.

Gradually the labourer and small cultivator lost the use they had made of the road-side and other waste which were assigned under inclosure acts, not to the occupier, but _the owner_ of the cottage; few cottages were in the occupation of their owners; they generally, indeed we may say universally, belonged to the proprietors of the neighbouring farms, and the allotments granted in lieu of the extinguished common rights were generally added to the large farms, and seldom attached to the cottages. The cottages which were occupied by their owners had of course allotments attached to them; but these by degrees passed by sale into the hands of some large proprietor in the neighbourhood, _De facto_, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, the allotment has been detached from the cottage, and thrown into the occupation of some adjoining farmer.

That such a charge should have been attended with important consequences, can excite no surprise, a complete severance was effected between the peasantry and the soil; the little farmers and cottiers were converted into day-labourers, depending entirely upon daily earnings which may, and frequently did, in point of fact, fail them. They had no land upon the produce of which to fall as a reserve when the demand for labour happened to be slack. This revolution became unquestionably the cause of the heavy and increasing burdens upon parishes in the form of poor-rates, and jail rates.

It has been well said that from the moment when any man begins to think that

‘The world is not his friend, nor the world’s law,’

the world and the world’s law are likely to have that man for their enemy; and if he does not commence direct hostilities against them, he abandons himself to despair, and becomes a useless if not a hurtful member of the community.

If we go back to the time of the great plague, about the middle of the reign of Edward III., which gave occasion to the first attempt to regulate wages by law, corn rose from 5s. 4d., the average the first twenty-five years to 11s. 9d., the average of the twenty-five years following. In this reign the pound of silver was coined into 25s., and at the end of the reign of Henry IV., into 30s. In 1444, other statutes regulating wages were passed probably owing to the high price of corn, which had risen on an average of the ten preceding years to 10s. 8d., without any further alterations in the coin; and for this reason there seems no adequate cause but a succession of scanty crops; as a continuance of low prices afterwards prevailed for sixty years. The average price of wheat from 1444 to the end of the reign of Henry VII. (1509) returned to 6s., while the pound of silver was coined into £1 17s. 6d. instead of £1 2s. 6d., as at the passing of the first statute of labourers in 1350, thus indicating a continuance of favourable seasons, and probably, an improved system of agriculture. The rise in the price of corn during the next century was owing probably to other causes. From 1646 to 1665 the price of the quarter of wheat was £2 10s. 0d. During the wars of the Roses, and subsequently it was cheap; but during the civil wars under Charles I., and for some time subsequently it was dear. The harvests of 1794 and 1795 were deficient, but the rise in the price of grain, occasioned by the deficiency of these two years, which is supposed to have been about one eighth, threw into the hands of the agricultural interest, in 1795 and 1796, when prices were at the highest, from 24 to 28 millions for the two years, the farmers with a deficiency of one eighth, having sold their crops for nearly a third more than the usual price before labour had risen.

Mr. Reynolds saw the evils we have been describing, and when he purchased the manor of Madeley from Mr. Smitheman he made it a point to encourage small allotments and leases of copyholds.

THE CHURCH, AND THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS ASPECTS OF THE PEOPLE OF MADELEY.

We have previously given the names of some of the early rectors of the church, when the whole mind of the people here, as elsewhere, by education, if not conviction, was Roman Catholic. There was undoubtedly a pleasant kind of poetry about the older system of religion, which no man, from the peasant to the peer, thought of questioning, but which, from the cradle to the grave, governed and regulated, as far as its influences went, the thoughts and actions of all men. They were the high days of ecclesiastical power, when the Church could smite with excommunication and civil disability obnoxious families or individuals, and when monarchs could be cut off from the allegiance of their subjects, and made to appear as lepers among their brethren.

We know little of the moral or social condition of the inhabitants, or how far they were influenced by the rude discipline to which they were subject. Delusion, we know, by the traces it has left, then and for a long time after among the uneducated classes, formed the basis often of belief. It was a time when man, equally deceived by the imperfections of his senses and the illusions of self-love, long considered himself to be the centre of the movements of the stars, and his vanity was punished by the terrors to which they gave rise. It may not have had a corrupting tendency, and may even have been a beneficial fallacy, for it must have tended much to the accomplishment of any undertaking to believe that it was within the range of possibility. We can now view the planets as they circle, without supposing that they are impelled by intelligences who exercise either a benign or a hostile influence over our action. Ages of labour have removed the veil which concealed the true nature of the planets, and man now finds himself on the surface of one which he has reason to suppose is so small as to be scarcely perceptible in that great solar system which formerly appeared so mysterious. Then it was not so: astrologers and conjurors were looked up to as wielding even more terrific powers than the priest, and horoscopes, nativities, and the most ordinary events were traced to influences of the planets. Dust and cobwebs now cover the tombs of the authors of works on astrology; the staff on which they leaned is broken; their brazen instruments are green and cankered.

In an old book on this subject, disinterred among certain other contents of an old chest in the vestry of the church, entitled “Astrological Predictions for 1652,” we find, as was not unusual, awful prognostications concerning Church and State, and threatenings of troubles, violent distempers, and great slaughters. There appears to have been a court of astrologers, for we find a notice in a foot-note of “a learned sermon composed for the Society of Astrologers.” Predictions and assertions of interference with men’s actions and the most ordinary course of events not being read to advantage except in the language of their authors, we purpose giving an extract or two. Like relics, which seem to lose their venerable sanctity when removed from an old tomb to a museum, extracts in modern type lose the charm the well-thumbed old yellow work has as it is lifted from the old church chest, mellow and mouldy. It appears from the numerous notes and memorandums on the blank leaves to have been used by the clergyman as a sort of pocket-book, and some of the notes appear to be intended attestations of the predictions so earnestly given. Here are some of the predictions bearing chiefly upon passing events of the times, or such as were likely to arise:—

“England is subject to that Sign of the Zodiac, viz. Aries, wherein Mars at present is placed, & therefore we English, & in Engla. must expect some, or many of those misfortuns which he generally signifieth, and which even now we repeated: but the same sign pointeth out also many Cities & places in the upper Germany, so also in Austria and its Territories, the Eastern and Southeast parts of France and the Cities and Townes therein scituated, also the North East or more Easterly parts of Denmark, that or those parts of the Polonian Countries or Provinces which are bordering or adjacent unto the unruly Cossacks, and those Cities and Towns in the upper Silesia, which lye neer unto the Borders or Confines of the Turks Dominions, the Dukedom of Burgundy; the Swedish Nation and Souldiery are also more or lesse, and many of their Towns subject unto the Sign Aries, and therefore in all or most of these Countries by us nominated, there will be some violent distempers in the people, some slaughter of men, and casually by one accident or other much damage in many of their principal Cities or Sea-towns by Fire, War, inroads of Pyrates or souldiers, &c.”

“When Venus shall be Lady of the yeare and unfortunate, as now she is in the seventh house; Women will more than ordinary scold with their Husbands, and run twatling and scolding out of their houses: many Men will depart, or run, separate or divorce themselves from their Wives. This unnaturall Deportment of Women unto their Husbands and Men unto their Wives, is increased by the nearnesse of Venus unto Mars, and his positure in the seventh House, which signifieth Women, their loves and affections either unto their Husbands or others. In that House he is ‘Damnofus & malus, quia significat inimicitias & discordias magnas, & accident hominibus furta interfectiones & contentiones multæ & rixæ in illo anno maximeq in gent illius Climatis.’ Mars is very unfortunately placed in the seventh house, signifying there will be many controversies, Law-suits, Duels, much enmity, many Thefts by Sea & Land, much robbing of Houses; and these shall most apparantly manifest themselves in the Country, City or Towne subject unto the sign he is in, of which we have formerly treated.”

The eclipse of the sun, 29th March, 1652, 9-56 a.m., is announced with hieroglyphic figures, followed by these remarks:—