1600s

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.

Nos. 5 -25 High Street

Nos. 26-33 are part of an overall sequence of town properties (1-271, in all) showing their transfer, as recorded in the manor court minute books.

They relate specifically to what once occupied the land later taken up by Nos. 5-25 High Street.

Extracted in this form from The Town of Lowestoft c. 1720-25: People and Property in a Pre-Industrial Coastal Community (Lowestoft Heritage Workshop Centre, 2019).

(North of Mariners Street)

• Moving from North to South.
• Occupying former agricultural land and of freehold tenure.
• All properties fronting the High Street.

East end of the North Field  

1. John Burgis - house, garden & adjoining arable enclosure (seven-eighths of an acre).

2. Agnes Eastgate - two houses & adjoining garden (half-acre).

Church Way interposing (now St. Margaret’s Road)

3. Thomas Bury - house, curtilage & garden (one acre).

(Parish Register Entries)

The register entries below are presented in as close a way as possible to the original handwritten ones

In 1662, an Act of Settlement for the Better Relief of the Poor was passed by Parliament – a measure soon to become known as the Act of Settlement and Removal, as it aimed at restricting the movement of people from the parishes where they were living in a state of poverty into ones (nearby or further removed) where they believed that they would be better off.

Hearth Tax, as a means of raising money for The Crown, was introduced into England following the Restoration of the Monarchy under Charles II in 1660. It functioned on the principle of being a wealth tax, in that the number of fire-places in a house was taken as indicating the affluence of the occupant. The greater the number of rooms heated, the richer that householder was assumed to be – either as owner or renter.