1600s

CREDIT: Ivan Bunn and David Butcher

Origins

This article is in its original form, with minor alterations. It was published (with editorial adjustments and changes) in English Ceramic Circle Transactions, vol. 21 (2010), forming pp. 49-74 of that journal.

Ecclesiastical Visitation Material (1606, 1629 & 1633)

Before the Diocese of St. Edmundsbury & Ipswich was created in 1914, Norwich Diocese was one of the largest in England – covering most of Norfolk and Suffolk (with small areas of the western margins of both counties coming under the Ely jurisdiction). Suffolk was divided into two Archdeaconaries: that of Sudbury covering the western half of the county and that of Suffolk covering the east.

Serious crime, or felony (consisting of treason, murder, assault resulting in serious injury, witchcraft, highway robbery, arson, burglary, rape, grand arceny, forgery, counterfeiting and smuggling) was largely dealt with during the Early Modern period at the six-monthly assizes, held usually in the county towns of the realm. Though some of the offences named, if deemed to have been of a lesser level of seriousness (mainly, matters of assault – including rape – and damage to property), were handled at the three-monthly quarter sessions.

Mid-16th to Mid-18th Century

The Manorial System served both as the foundation of land ownership and management and of maintaining the peace and good order of each local community. It had its origins in  Early Medieval times (what was formerly known as the Anglo-Saxon period) and was further shaped and developed following the Norman Conquest – which is now taken as being the start of the Late Medieval era.

The one thing missing from F.A. Crisp’s printed versions of the Lowestoft Parish Registers (1902) is any reference to the baptisms or burials of any infants born out of wedlock. Yet, such entries are there from the very first year of the first surviving register book: 1561. The best guess as to why this is so is probably to be found in attitudes of the time regarding illegitimacy being widely seen as a social disgrace, together with the more practical matter of who was to be responsible for the raising of the child – if it survived.

When Elizabeth I acceded to the English throne in November 1558, she had a number of problems facing her – not the least of which was the matter of what the country’s official brand of the Christian Faith was to be and what form it was to take.

Annot’s Free Grammar School

The single most important event in the process of public education in Lowestoft during the early modern period came in June 1570, when Thomas Annot (merchant) founded a free grammar school. A summary of the original deed of gift is to be found in the Rev. John Arrow’s Memorandum Book (he was Lowestoft’s parish priest, 1760-89) – Norfolk Record Office - PD 589/92, pp. 13-14. And it is also present in Edmund Gillingwater’s An Historical Account of the Ancient Town of Lowestoft (1790), p. 299.

Among the many interesting features to emerge from close study of the 507 wills and 100 probate inventories which have survived for the period indicated in the title are the rates of literacy able to be determined in the various occupational groups which formed the town’s socio-economic structure. Even today, there would probably be argument (or at least discussion) among specialists in the field as to what literacy means. The same holds true for historians.

The largest administrative task by far to demand both the attention and the time of the parochial authorities in Lowestoft during the Early Modern period was relief of the poor – a weighty responsibility placed upon English parishes by the formative Poor Law Act of 1601. And the fortunate survival of Overseers of the Poor account books for the period 1656-1712 (Suffolk Archives, Ipswich - 01/13/1/1&2) reveals much about the implementation of this legislation.

For centuries, the use of alms boxes in parish churches throughout the whole of England was a means of collecting sums of money for charitable purposes – particularly the relief of poverty where it was known or seen to exist. During the 16th century, as a result of general cost inflation (aggravated by Henry VIII’s mindless extravagance and debasement of the coinage, to say nothing of the social and economic problems caused by the Dissolution of the Monasteries), the alleviation of financial distress in the lower levels of society became more and more of a challenge.