Regulation of the Lowestoft Community

The Governors and Governed in Early Modern Times

In the absence of research relating to felony, and with ecclesiastical court records left largely unexplored, the leet court business in Lowestoft (see Manorial Governance) will be used as indicator of attitudes towards the regulation of local society. There were two differing views of the role of the Law current in pre-industrial England, expressed by James Sharpe in Crime in Early Modern England, 1550-1750 (1984), p. 143. The first one saw the whole code as “a cultural and ideological force so widely diffused in English society as to inform the notions and actions of the population at large”; the second regarded it as “more obviously the embodiment of the ideas and aspirations of the groups which ruled that population”. The use of the law, by better-off members of society, as a means of controlling the lower orders has been admirably demonstrated with regard to one particular Essex rural community: Keith Wrightson & David Levine, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 1525-1700 (1979), pp. 118-9. The collation of assize, quarter session and ecclesiastical court material has been used to show how the various cases brought before these bodies were attempts by the richer villagers to control the poorer ones.

Such manipulation of the law was practised in other communities of the time, and it has even been seen as a vital element in the mood of England generally during the first half of the seventeenth century. The argument would seem to be that, in an age of mounting population pressure and more clearly defined social stratification, local officials and other people belonging to the levels of society from which those officials were drawn became more aware of the cultural gap between themselves and the poor. And with that heightened awareness came a sense of greater need to control the lower ranks lest they should prove a threat to established order.

It has been noted, elsewhere in these pages (Lowestoft Overseers of the Poor Accounts, 1656-1712), that the administration of Poor Law in Lowestoft does not seem to have been carried out in such a way as to make it a means of social control. And as for the function of the leet court – which one observer (James Sharpe again in another of his works, on the community of Kelvedon in Essex) has said “still represented a link in the chain of institutions upon which law and order depended in this period” (i.e. the first half of the seventeenth century) – it can only be said to have sat in judgement on itself. As has been seen (in Lowestoft Manorial Governance c. 1580-1730), the jurors were the chief tenants of the manor and the various officers of the court were appointed from among the merchants, the tradespeople and the more substantial craftsmen. And who were the offenders requiring to be disciplined? – people from those very same levels of society and even, on occasions, both jurors and officers themselves! A conversation with the late John Ridgard, leading Suffolk medievalist, revealed that this was also the case during both the 14th and 15th centuries.  

A limited number of examples will serve to demonstrate the Lowestoft typicality. At the session of 1620, William Rising (yeoman), one of the newly elected parish constables, was fined 10s for allowing a mangy horse to roam about on one of the common greens. In 1652, Richard Brissingham, John So[a]ne (yeoman) and Thomas Harvey (gentleman), all jurors of the leet, were each fined 3s 4d for not maintaining the road surface outside their houses, as they had been ordered to do the previous year. There is no surviving record for 1651, but it is interesting to note that William Arnold (brewer), who had been elected as one of the four constables for that particular year, was fined 3d in 1652 for throwing dead pigs into the common watering-place on Goose Green. In 1690, John Wilde (merchant) was fined 3d for blocking a footway with two posts and a rail and 6d for not fencing off a well. As he had been appointed afferator at the previous leet, he was in the ironic position of fixing the rate at which he was to be fined. And he wasn’t the only one to be in that position over the years! Finally, in 1710, all four of the parish constables, who had just completed their year of office (serving three months each) had 3d fines imposed for highway offences. John Wilde, William Balls and Edward Colby (all merchants) were penalised for not maintaining the road surface outside their houses, while John Peach (yeoman and brewer) was found guilty of two misdemeanours: depositing muck on the Queen’s highway (location not given) and not keeping a ditch and footpath near his malthouse in sufficiently good order.

None of the offences cited here was particularly serious in the hierarchy of law-breaking, but the regularity with which such misdemeanours were committed by some people, over a number of years, suggests a community of petty offenders who knew what the local ordinances were, but who seemed quite content to go on paying the fines. Even the vicar, Henry Youell, was amerced 3d on two separate occasions (1669 and 1670) for throwing the contents of his privy into the street. Though it was no doubt one of his domestic servants who carried out the task and not the clergyman himself. The people who broke the laws most frequently (overwhelmingly, in fact) were from those sections of society responsible for upholding and enforcing the code. And no stigma seems to have attached to the many lapses from the required standard of public conduct. People obviously flouted the rules because it was convenient to do so or because there was no great pressure within the community to behave otherwise. Even the most worthy citizens were guilty of infringement. No family did more good for the inhabitants of Lowestoft over the years than the Wildes, but they were just as capable of depositing muck in the streets, blocking footpaths and allowing water-courses to flood as those people of a less philanthropic disposition.

Any picture of Lowestoft’s annual leet court as an instrument of social control shows that, at best, it had only a limited effect with the kind of order it sought to impose and that it dealt almost exclusively with the better-off members of society (see Lowestoft Manorial Governance, c. 1580-1730). There was no question of the court being used by the more affluent to regulate the conduct of the poor, because it was primarily an agency which dealt with the misdemeanours of the property-owning classes. The humblest members of society did not possess real estate, had little or no livestock, were not able to rent land on any scale, and probably could not afford to drink or gamble to any great extent. Therefore, given the nature of the ten main offences discernible in the manorial minute books, the lower orders did not really have the opportunity to appear before the jurors. Even brawling in the street, on the evidence of the records, does not seem to have been practised by them.

The leet court existed as the means of regulating the conduct of the manor’s inhabitants (and therefore of the parish, because both areas were identical in size) – but only those inhabitants who were of some substance. Its failure to raise standards of behaviour in certain matters of public responsibility probably suggests not so much weak manorial control in itself (through an absentee lord) as the inability or unwillingness, on the part of the guilty, to change codes of established practice. The fact of the various offences being indictable under the laws of the manor showed that the authorities acknowledged the anti-social nature of such behaviour, but the fines imposed were not sufficiently punitive in many cases as to deter offenders from committing the same acts over and over again. 

Urban government by manorial and parochial means

Throughout the total period of study covered by this writer (broadly speaking, 1550-1750), Lowestoft was, by the standards of the time, a market town of respectable size – though not a large one (c. 1500-2000 people). During the last seventy years of the two hundred covered, it was also a place of increasing maritime specialisation. It had no charter, and therefore no corporation, and it governed itself by a combination of parish vestry (Minister and Churchwardens) and manorial court – with the leet assembly being the latter’s main instrument. The combination of these two agencies was certainly not uncommon in small towns during the Early Modern period and attention has long been drawn to the way in which they often acted as substitutes for the governing institutions established by a charter of incorporation. Lowestoft did not receive its charter until 31 August 1885, when a population of 17,500 and flourishing maritime activity drew official recognition of its importance as Suffolk’s second largest town.

Close to Lowestoft lay the neighbouring market town of Beccles – again, a community of similar size, but one which had been granted a charter in the year 1584. Here, the instruments of government were twofold: the corporation itself and two manorial courts (land leet and water leet). The former, consisting of thirty-six members, concerned itself with the administration of the extensive area of marshland and common adjoining the town, with relief of the poor, with supporting the town’s free grammar school and with assisting the parish church in various ways. The latter two dealt largely with infringements of local ordinances, at least six of which were the same as the offences handled by the Lowestoft leet (failure to maintain road surfaces, depositing rubbish in the street, blocking water-courses, polluting ponds, dereliction of duty and trading irregularities). This information is to be found in the Beccles Society’s publication, Beccles Revisited (1984) – edited by the late Nesta Evans – pp. 57-8, 59-63 & 23.

The emphasis placed on the Lowestoft court, in the absence of any institutions established by Charter, may help to explain why it remained active over such a long period of time – only becoming less significant with the appointment of Improvement Commissioners for the town in 1810 (this, arising from a parliamentary Improvement Act of that year). Its regulation of the community was a combination of the attempted and the actual, and its influence seems to have been supplemented by the Lothingland tourn for at least some of the total period of study. Altogether, the manorial bureaucracy was responsible for the creation of fifteen official posts (steward, rents bailiff, court bailiff, four constables, two ale-tasters, two leather searchers & sealers, two hog-reeves or fen-reeves, and two afferators – who set the level of fines), while the parish vestry contributed another ten (parish clerk, two churchwardens, sexton, four overseers of the poor and two highway surveyors). 

In addition to this twenty-five, there was also (by the end of the 17th century/beginning of the 18th) what may be termed the de facto position of Town Clerk – a term encountered in the burial entry of John Evans (3 January 1706).  He was a scrivener of some kind, first detectable in a baptism entry of 28 April 1684, who obviously performed various kinds of public service in the town (including keeping the Poor Law accounts) and who also ran a school of some kind teaching basic literacy and numeracy. His period of residence coincided with the increasing maritime specialisation evident in Lowestoft and the growth of population resulting from this. His literacy skills were obviously valuable in helping to cope with an increasing amount of civic bureaucracy and paperwork. Thus, although the model of Lowestoft’s governance may have been essentially rural in origin, even perhaps in nature, it appears to have been adequate for the demands made upon it. Those people elected or appointed to office were the ones who administered local government – not only in the sense of having executive power, but also through belonging to those levels of society from which officialdom was recruited. 

            In the sense that Lowestoft’s rulers were drawn from the better-off sections of the population, it may be tempting to view the governing elite as oligarchical – a feature which seems to have been typical at the time in English towns. However, such a view needs qualification, because membership of the elite was not restricted to a limited number of the wealthiest men of all and office-holding was spread across various occupational and social groups – with the exception of labourer and servant. At any point during the 17th century, a five-year period would have produced about sixty men who held manorial and parochial office, while during the first half of the eighteenth it had risen to about seventy – duly mainly to the increase in population which had taken place. The former figure, on the evidence of the family reconstitution data, represented about 23% of family heads during the first half of the seventeenth century and about 17% during the second. The latter accounts for 16%. Such proportions are, of course, worked out on a relatively short time-span. If the period of office-holding analysis is extended to twenty-five years (bearing in mind that the levels of society involved were usually not those which formed the town’s transient population), then something like 40% of family heads in Lowestoft are seen to have served in some kind of official capacity between 1650 and 1699 and 33% between 1700 and 1730. This degree of involvement in the regulation of the community hardly suggests that a local oligarchy was the controlling factor in the town’s affairs.

What is difficult to ascertain, in terms of hard evidence, is the overall influence of substantial, long-stay families detectable among merchants, retailers, wealthier craftsmen and seafarers. So-called “ruling families” have been identified in some of England’s larger towns and there is no doubt that Lowestoft had its equivalents. The Arnolds, Ashbys, Barkers, Durrants, Jexes, Mighells, Pacys, Risings, Utbers, Wards and Wildes all exercised considerable authority in the town, because of their wealth and because they had been resident for so long.  Members of the Arnold, Barker and Wilde families are to be found in the 1524 Lay Subsidy, with the first two also present in that of 1568 – as are the Ashbys, Mighells and Wards. The Allens (or Allins) have not been placed in the list of influential families  because they ceased to have any real part in the town’s affairs after about the middle of the 17th century.

Of lesser standing than these twelve, but also of some importance, were the Canhams, Coes, Daynes(es), Feltons, Ferneys, Fishers, Fowlers, Frarys, Hawes(es), Kitredges, Landifields, Mewses, Munds(es), Neales, Spicers and Uttings. Any marriages which took place among members of the various long-stay families must have helped to reinforce their position as leaders of the community, but there are no real signs of deliberate exclusiveness on their part (except, perhaps, in the case of some of the seafarers). In fact, people moving into the town were soon accepted into the office-holding classes – as long as they were of sufficient means to merit a place there. In a very small number of cases, they did not remain in Lowestoft for long, but they were made part of its governing structure during their period of residence.

Some examples of the acceptance of newcomers into the ruling establishment during the earlier part of the eighteenth century may now be given for the purposes of example. Leake Bitson (merchant) does not feature in any documentation until 1714. In that year, he appears as one of the chief pledges (jurors) at the leet court and was also elected ale-taster. He had three children baptised between September 1714 and May 1717, and he himself died before the third one was christened. Edward Morgan (innkeeper) had only been in town about a year, when he was made one of the chief pledges in 1712. A year later, he was appointed as one of the four constables, and this was followed by his election as fen-reeve in 1720. He died in 1732. Humphrey Overton (also an innkeeper) appears in the leet records of 1709 as one of the chief pledges. He was appointed constable the next year, overseer of the poor in 1711, and the parish register records the baptism of three of his children between October 1710 and March 1713. After the latter date, there is no further sign of him, so he had presumably moved on to new premises somewhere else.

John Peach (yeoman and brewer) is first detectable in the tithe accounts of 1708. The following year, he appears in the leet records as chief pledge and constable. Much later on, in 1736, 1737 and 1747, he served as churchwarden, and he died in February 1749. James Primrose (baker) is detectable in the leet of 1707 as both chief pledge and constable (he also took an apprentice in the same year), and four of his children appear in the parish registers between January 1707 and April 1711. His wife, Margaret, died in the latter month and year (perhaps from childbirth complications) and he himself left Lowestoft at some point after this, eventually re-marrying in Beccles in April 1714.

Inclusion in the process of governing the community was not limited solely to the elected offices. If an incomer bought one of the chief tenements, the purchase entitled him to serve as juror on the leet and take his turn as collector of the lord’s rents. It was not necessarily the richest people who owned these pieces of freehold land in every case – especially during the latter part of the period – and thus an influential position was able to be held by someone of lesser means than the wealthiest members of local society. In the occasional case encountered of a woman holding a chief tenement, she was responsible for collecting rents (if the rota used fell upon her), but was not allowed to serve as a juror in the leet court’s function.

In the final analysis, it was probably the case that the most powerful people in town were the members of families which had been resident for generations and which derived their influence not only from accumulated wealth, but also from the accumulation of local custom and tradition, backed by a reputation for financial probity and credit-worthiness (personal trustworthiness, in Early Modern times, being almost as much of a commodity as goods traded). At the same time, their control of the community in which they lived was not absolute and they were prepared to share the process of government with any newcomers deemed to be suitable. What is more, there is no suggestion that they were forced to do this because of an inbuilt inability to regenerate and maintain the hierarchical structure from within their own ranks. There seems to have been genuine recognition that, among the incomers entering the town, were those suitable to be involved in the ordering and conduct of its affairs.

CREDIT: David Butcher