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%iItsbire 3Re:urI1 éutietp (formerly the Records Branch of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society) VOLUME XXXVI FOR THE YEAR 1980 THIS VOLUME IS PUBLISHED WITH THE HELP OF GRANTS FROM THE BRITISH ACADEMY AND THE WELLCOME TRUST Impression of 500 copies WILTSHIRE CORONERS’ BILLS 1752-1796 EDITED BY R. F. HUNNISETT DEVIZES 1981 © Wiltshire Record Society ISBN:»O 901333 13 1 Set in Times New Roman 10/11pt. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY J. G. FENN LTD. (Prim Division) STOKE-ON-TREN STAFFS. CONTENTS Preface page xi Ralph Bemard Pugh: an Appreciation xiii Bibliography compiled by Susan M. Keeling xvii Abbreviations xxvn INTRODUCTION Historical Background xxix Archival History xxx Related Records xxxii Quarter Sessions xxxv The Bills: compilation and arrangement xxxvii Districts xliv The Coroners xlvii The Inquests l Editorial Note li NORTH WILTSHIRE BILLS 1 SOUTH WILTSHIRE BILLS 138 CORSHAM BILLS 174 WOOTTON BASSETT BILLS 177 APPENDIX: MISSING BILLS 179 INDEX OF PERSONS 181 IN DEX OF PLACES Z01 INDEX OF SUBJECTS 219 List of Members 231 Publications of the Society 238 PREFACE Volume XXXVI is offered to the President ofthe Society, Professor R.B. Pugh, as an acknowledgement of his work on its behalf since its birth in 1937. The Society records its thanks to Ralph Pugh's friends and colleagues, too numerous to name individually, who have made contributions to, or suggestions for, this presentation volume. Particular thanks, however, are due to two of his American friends, Miss Charlene K. Roise and Mr P. D. Rushing, for allowing their portrait of Ralph Pugh, taken in 1980 on the rostrum of the statue of George VI in the Mall, to be used as the frontispiece. Dr R.F. Hunnisett, whose edition of Wiltshire Coroner's Bills, I 752-I 796, forms the basis of this volume, has asked that the County Archivist of Wiltshire, Mr M.G. Rathbone, and the Senior Assistant Archivist, Mr I(.H. Rogers, be thanked for their advice on the numbering of the bills and for answering queries about ancillary records. He also wishes to thank Professor Pugh himself for help with identifying place names, MI C.H.C. Whittick for information about contemporary Glamorgan and Sussex bills, Miss Frances Backhouse for helping to check the typescript and to read the proofs, and Dr D.C. Cox, honorary general editor 1976-9, for his interest during the early stages of the work. The Wiltshire Records Committee most generously allowed the bills to be transferred from the County Record Office and deposited at the Public Record Office for Dr Hunnisett to work upon. The bills, which are unpub- lished Crown copyright material, are printed here in calendar form by the permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Grateful thanks are due both to the British Academy and to the Wellcome Trust for making generous grants towards the cost of printing. December 1980 JANET H. STEVENSON RALPH BERNARD PUGH AN APPRECIATION RALPH PUGH is a good subject: his personality presents the bold features and strong lines which a portrait painter is glad to find in a face. To write an appreciation of him is a challenge, the more so because the writer is aware that the subject will be his sternest critic, quick to notice any weakness of struc- ture, any misunderstanding of evidence, any inaccuracy of detail, any infelicity of style. One of his former colleagues at the Public Record Office warned a new member of the Victoria County History staff, ‘He’s a hard taskmaster. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly.’ Those who have worked with him may have been intimidated by his high standards of sanity, seriousness, and unswerving logic, but they know nevertheless that those qualities never deflect the persistence of his kindness and friendship. To record the events and achievements of a man's career does not neces- sarily tell much of his personality. St Paul’s School and the Queen’s College, Oxford, with first class honours in Modern History, indicate a sound education and academic ability above the ordinary. Fifteen years in the Civil Service, primarily as an Assistant Keeper of the Public Records but including six years in the Dominions Office, denote an administrator able to bring practical experience to the understanding of administrative history. Estab- lishing a county record society and editing its publications declare a devotion both to the county and to historical research; books and articles attest the scholarship of their author, whose distinction was recognized in his appoint- ment as editor of the Victoria County History, as lecturer (later supernumerary fellow) of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and as Professor of English History at London University. Scholarship is his great passion, to be pursued nationally, internationally, and in his beloved Wiltshire, as witnessed by his Raleigh lectureship, his visiting fellowships in the U.S.A. notably twice at Princeton, and his presidency of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society. Of his writing in various fields it is impossible not to mention his monumental and pioneering Imprisonment in medieval England or the relatively short How to write a parish history, described by its publishers as a sixth edition of a work first issued in 1879 but in fact a completely new book, enjoining high stand- ards in an activity often regarded as suitable for the amateur and the dilettante. To the teaching of diplomatic, in classes which he helped to establish in the University of London for research students and future archivists, he brought unstinting care and meticulous planning. He is a great promoter of causes, not only those connected with historical studies, as with his continuing concern for the work of the Public Record Office and with the initiative and drive which he gave to the committee on the central records of the Church of England, but also broader interests, as exemplified by his eight years on the Council of the National Trust. xiv R.B. PUGH His outstanding and characteristic achievements, however, have been his work for the V.C.H. and the Wiltshire Record Society. The Record Society is a local not a national institution and is much smaller than the V.C.H. in the scale of its endeavours, but whereas the structure which he built for the V.C.H. stands on old foundations, and is buttressed by the University of London and other powerful bodies, the Record Society is his own creation on new ground. Others with whom he has generously tried to share the credit for the formation in 1937 of the Records Branch of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society have denied that they were more than his willing supporters. It was with characteristic tact that he started the Society as an offshoot of the W.A.N.H.S. The good relations which he has maintained with the parent body meant that the nominal change from Records Branch to Wiltshire Record Society in 1967 made little practical difference. To found a new society requires imagination, persistence, and application; to keep it going without any lowering of standards through hard times (the Records Branch was only two years old at the outbreak of the Second World War) calls for the same qualities in a more sustained if less intensive way. Everyone who has been actively concerned with the Record Society is aware that far beyond being at various times its Honorary Secretary, General Editor, Chairman, and President, Ralph Pugh has been its driving and controlling force. The world of historical research knows the Wiltshire Record Society as one of the best, probably the very best, of local record societies, both for the quality and for the regularity of its publications. Those achievements are principally his doing. Besides serving those offices, keeping his colleagues up to the mark, and counselling the editors of particular volumes, he has edited four texts for the Society, setting standards for others to emulate. His editions of Feet offines, Edward I and Edward II (the first volume published by the Society) and of the Court rolls ofAdam de Stratton’s manors (volume xxiv), though typical of the plain but necessary fare of local reoord societies, were done with ingenuity and new insight. Gaol delivery and trailbaston trials, 1275-1306 (volume xxxiii) covered ground that was less well trodden. The Calendar ofAntrobus deeds before 1625 (volume iii), behind its forbidding title, is useful for local history in Wiltshire but is much more important as the textbook which gave structure to the diplomatic of conveyancing. All four editions illustrate his devotion to historical scholarship and his love for Wiltshire, learnt from his father’s family and particularly from his uncle, C.W. Pugh, in Devizes. It was through Wiltshire that he came to the V.C.H. The series had started in 1899 as a private enterprise, had nearly expired from the inadequacy of its financial support in 1909, and from then on had survived precariously until it was given to the University of London in 1933. Long—term arrangements for the management of the project were not made until after the Second World War; they were fashioned then as a collaboration, of which Ralph Pugh and others concerned with Wiltshire were the initiators, between the University and various local bodies. In 1945 Swindon Corporation consulted him, APPRECIATION XV among others, about its wish to sponsor local history, and he persuaded it to approach London University with a view to joining with other local authorities in the county to form a committee that would finance the V.C.H. in Wiltshire. At that time the University could not hope to employ a salaried central staff of more than two assistants in addition to the General Editor, and the method adopted in Wiltshire of using local funds to provide editorial staff for a particular county was soon followed elsewhere.

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