Issue 19, Autumn 2020 Detail from the Harrietsham parish plague instruc- tions [P173/7/1] Reopening the Searchroom Sheila Malloch, Customer Services Officer - Archives and Local History

We have been welcoming readers back into our searchroom since 18 August. As we have had to make the searchroom and our back offices at the History and Library Centre COVID- secure, we have made a number of changes to the ways that we operate.

Our current opening hours are Tuesday-Saturday from 10.00am- 4.00pm, with bookable slots from 10.00am-12.45pm and 1.15- 4.00pm. You can book a morning or afternoon slot, or both slots to make a full day. If we have different people booked on one table for the morning and afternoon sessions, then we use the half hour gap in the middle of the day to prepare the table for the next user, including wiping down surfaces, and getting out their pre-ordered documents. We request that customers email us in advance to arrange their booking so that we can try to accommodate them.

To enable social distancing, we have limited the number of visitors in the searchroom to two people at a time. This also means that our staff can undertake searchroom supervision and complete their other work duties safely. We have hand sanitiser stations at the entrances to the Library and the Archives; all staff wear gloves to handle documents, and a facemask or visor when meeting the public; and visitors are asked to wear facemasks unless they are exempt. All documents and finding aids must now be pre-ordered at least three days in advance to limit the traffic of staff between different work areas. We are also quarantining all documents that have been consulted for three days after use. As this means that requested documents are out of circulation for this period, it is essential to request documents in good time so that we can make sure they will be available for you. However, please be mindful of the number of documents you are requesting and gauge whether you will be able to get through all that you have ordered during your session.

We are currently unable to lend or sell pencils, or provide pound coins for lockers, so don’t forget to bring supplies with you. We are also unable to accept payments in cash, so if you envisage that you will need a camera licence or to order copies, please remember to bring a debit or credit card for payment. As the cost of our camera licence has not changed since 2015, this will be increasing at the beginning of November to £6 for half a day and £12 for a full day. Use of our camera licences has proved especially popular at present, enabling readers to take multiple copies to study at home, which reduces the number of visits needed. Please remember these copies are for your own use and should not be shared.

We have adjusted to our new ways of working and have received good feedback on the service we are offering. We hope to see you back at the Archives sooner rather than later. We have missed you all.

Document in Detail: Instructions to Churchwardens to Combat the Plague [P173/7/1] Mark Ballard, Archive Service Officer

Part of the instructions for preventing the spread of the plague issued to Harrietsham’s churchwardens [P173/7/1].

A document of 1578 from the parish archives of Harrietsham giving instructions for combatting the plague [P173/7/1] makes an interesting comparison with regulations in the year of Covid-19. It takes the form of a proclamation to churchwardens by commissioners acting for Queen Elizabeth I that must have been sent out to many parishes, though Harrietsham is the only parish in Kent that we know to have preserved its copy (and indeed we have not traced a copy beyond the county). It refers to a book of orders and medicinal reme- dies, printed on the Queen’s instruction, which the churchwardens must acquire and keep for reference in the parish church, and of which they must enforce observance. The British Library holds copies of a pam- phlet corresponding to this description, but apparently in no edition earlier than 1592.

The unenviable task of inspecting the bodies of the dead and determining the cause of death would fall to ‘two honest women of good yeeres’ chosen by the churchwardens and wisest parishioners. Though without medical qualifications for this duty, they would receive between them (from the deceased’s assets if possi- ble) a shilling each time they identified a victim of plague, and fourpence for fatalities otherwise diagnosed. The plague victims should be buried as far as possible from inhabited homes, in graves at least 6 feet deep.

Justices of the peace should be immediately informed of a house harbouring the plague or suspected of it. A white withy should be fastened to the exterior of houses and displayed for 40 days after a plague death. Every person venturing outside from such houses must display for the same period some black lace if wear- ing a white hat, cap or kerchief, or white lace on black headgear. Those who refused to comply with these orders should be referred to the commissioners for punishment.

The year 1578 is not noted for a widespread outbreak of plague, such as ‘the sweat’ of summer 1551, or the influenza in 1558 that had devastated the ranks of Queen Mary’s elderly Catholic clergy. The date these in- structions were issued, 29 December, suggests the 1578 outbreak was a pneumonic or airborne virus rather than a bubonic plague which spread in humid weather. Sporadic epidemics could hit rural areas at almost any time: probably local recurrences of earlier, more widespread, viruses – and, if so, in a pattern we might now heed. Contemporaries might have attributed them to the wrath of God, but the fact that some parishes might be decimated by them, while neighbouring parishes might escape entirely, suggests that strategies of ‘self-isolating’ and ‘local lockdowns’ were well understood and deployed.

Our present measures for ‘self-isolating’, ‘social distancing’, and ‘testing and tracing’ may differ in detail, but in so far as the Harrietsham churchwardens were required to implement strategies for combatting a virus when no vaccine was available, their situation was the same.

Evidence of Insurrection in the East Kent Quarter Session Calendars 1801- 1860 Alison Linklater, Archive Collections Assistant (Digitisation)

I have recently completed the task of listing the East Kent Quarter Session Calendars [Q/SBe/1-256], which record criminal trials held in Canterbury between 1801 and 1860. From these I have extracted the names of the accused, and where possible their occupations, ages, and the location of their misdemeanours; the names of the plaintiffs and witnesses in the case; and the name of the magistrate who committed them. This information will eventually be made available for Kent Archives’ users to search and will enable these un- derused records to become a more searchable resource. It is impossible to view such a large quantity of data – I have listed just over 6600 cases – and not be moved by the stories that are revealed. The majority of the crimes committed were motivated by poverty. Desperate people sought to alleviate their cold and hunger by stealing sundry items such as faggots of wood, a cheese, a piece of cake, some pickled pork, a loaf of bread, eight turnips, a plank of wood, a shirt which had been lain out to dry on a hedge, and even a quantity of grass growing in a field. Their punishment was generally a short term of hard labour in the house of correction, St. Augustine’s Gaol. The Quarter Sessions magistrates were mainly drawn from the landed gentry. It is not hard to see how re- sentment might grow between the poor – who were by far the most likely to be accused of crime – and the wealthy. Sometimes discontent might escalate to the point of insurrection, when groups of people assem- bled together to protest against their perceived injustices. Below are some of the incidences of insurrection that I have uncovered in the Quarter Sessions Calendars: 1801 Wage Protest in Chislet The beginning of the nineteenth century saw high grain prices and food shortages due to poor harvests and the war with France. In March 1801, William Dennet was charged with having ‘assembled together in an un- lawful manner’ with other labourers in Chislet in protest about their wages. It was alleged that they intercept- ed Henry Collard, one of the parish overseers, on the highway, ‘making use of words and language, in order to intimidate or prevail on him…to raise or advance the wages of labours in husbandry’ [Q/SBe/2]. It seems that William Dennett was the only person to be tried for this offence. He was ‘imprisoned and kept to hard labour for the space of two calendar months’. Dockyard Workers, 1801 and 1830

Part of the Quarter Sessions calendar entry relating to Thomas Price, who ’riotously and tumultuously assembled with divers other persons’ at Sheerness ’to the great disturbance of the public peace’ [Q/SBe/2]. On 13 April 1801 there was an uprising at Sheerness dockyard when a group of workers gathered to de- mand a colleague’s release from impressment. Having tried to throw Commissioner Isaac Coffin (who later became Admiral of the Blue) over the ramparts, the protestors obstructed the magistrate’s (Aaron Graham) reading of the Riot Act and threatened to throw him into the dock. Thomas Price [Q/SBe/2] and John Sole [Q/SBe/3] were both committed and sent for trial at the assizes, and the man on whose behalf they were protesting was released from impressment. A copy of a letter written by the magistrate to the rioters detailing how they might have better behaved in seeking to free their colleague is available to download via the National Archives’ website [HO 42/61/190, f.558], as is his letter to the Admi- ralty reporting the incident [HO 42/61/187, f.549-551]. Unrest peaked again in 1830 when five young men were tried for having ‘riotously and tumultuously assem- bled with divers other persons, to the number of two thousand or more, to the disturbance of the public peace’ [Q/SBe/118]. According to the Kentish Weekly Post of 27 April 1830, a mob had collected at the dockyard gate after parading two effigies representing dockyard wardens suspended from the gallows about the town in a cart. Men, women and children joined the affray and some carried broomsticks as weapons! Evidence of Insurrection in the East Kent Quarter Session Calendars 1801- 1860 Alison Linklater, Archive Collections Assistant (Digitisation)

Q/SBe/120: Calendar en- tries for the trials of Henry and Edward Read in 1830.

The Swing Riots 1830 not only saw hardship due to poor harvests; the increased mechanisation of farming practices also caused low wages and rural unemployment. Anger among labourers led to the organised destruction of threshing machines in a wave of protests that eventually spread across much of the south and east of the country. These were called the ‘Swing Riots’ after the fictitious ‘Captain Swing’ whose name was used on the threatening letters sent by the rioters to local landowners and authorities in advance of a ‘breaking’. The first incidence of machine breaking in Kent occurred in Lower Hardres on 28 August 1830. Two of the participants, Henry Read and Edward Read, were tried in the Michaelmas Session of that year. Among the depositions for this case is evidence given by a farm labourer, Marsh Hunt. He described how he was woken during the night ‘and saw the barn doors were open and some people were getting the machine out. They were half an hour (I judge) breaking it – they broke it with hammers and saws’ [Q/SBe/120]. The threshing machine had been hired from John Collick of Lyminge, who records in his deposition that the pieces were returned to him by servants the following morning. Over the following months other threshing machines were destroyed in Upper Hardres, Newington, Barham, Ash nest Sandwich, Stourmouth, Wingham, Bekesbourne, Patrixbourne and Ripple. There are written depo- sitions amongst the Quarter Session documents [Q/SBe/120, Q/SBe/121 and Q/SBe/125] in which victims and witnesses describe the events as they took place, and confessions from men who took part. 1835 Poor Law Riots Rural unrest and protests like the swing riots threatened the balance of authority and the government’s re- sponse to this was the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act. The Act was intended to reduce the cost of poor re- lief by making assistance for the able-bodied only available in workhouses, which were to be made particu- larly inhospitable in order to deter people from using them and make low paid work the preferred alternative. In doing so, the reforms neglected the fact that the ability of the poor to earn was frequently dependent on the economy, not just an individual’s inclination. It was an unpopular act that caused anger and unrest throughout the whole country in the coming years. In Kent there were several occasions when men grouped together to hinder the distribution of poor relief. In 1835, a Special Session of the courts was called to deal with the many men who had been committed for ‘riotously and tumultuously assembling, together with other persons unknown, to disturb the peace’ in Rod- mersham, , Doddington and Throwley [Q/SBe/140]. An account of the events at ap- peared in the Morning Post of 5 June 1835. The Rodmersham poor, mainly women, had been collecting relief (in the form of tickets) from the poor law officers in the church when a mob of men armed with bludgeons and sticks, some with blackened faces, assaulted the poor law officers, threatened the claim- ants, and threw stones. An observer went for help and military assistance was called for. Arrests were made, and following trial the main proponents of the protest were sen- The individuals brought before the East Kent Quarter Sessions for rioting tenced to two years’ hard labour at Maidstone in Rodmersham in 1835 [Q/SBe/140]. gaol. These insurrections represent only a small fraction of the tensions experienced across the county, but it has been interesting to read the stories of some of the individuals involved. It has been many years since I stud- ied nineteenth century history, but it is all here: from the misery of the poor, to the anger of the oppressed, and the power of the privileged as they used the law to maintain their social dominance. Consecrated to the Truth: Notaries public and their instruments

Mark Bateson, Assistant Service Manager – Archives and Local History On 27 July 1896, a seaman from a barquentine called the P J Palmer, walked into the offices of a Ramsgate public notary, Percy Edward San- key, to make a formal statement. This was of a special type known as a Note of Protest, and it concerned the circumstances of the abandonment of their recent voyage across the Atlantic. The protest included a vivid de- scription of a storm encountered in the North Sea, shortly after sailing from Hamburg, bound for Wilmington, USA, with a cargo of salt; the events that led up to the decision to abandon course; the ship’s arrival off the Galloper Light Vessel; and its piloting into Ramsgate harbour by the Ramsgate smack, Iona, for the sum of ten pounds.

The statement made by Master George Swayne and his crew has been preserved in a register of notes of protest now held in the Kent Archives [R/U774/O7]. The register is part of one of two small series of such vol- umes at the Kent History and Library Centre, compiled by Sankey and two other notaries in Ramsgate between 1864 and 1947. Notes of Pro- test, which incidentally are still used today, were designed to anticipate claims of loss by third parties on the grounds of negligence, citing circum- stances beyond the control of the crew and its Master. The accounts they contain will be of interest to historians of shipping and maritime history, shipwrecks and the like, and deserve to be further studied. Our focus in this brief article, however, is on the form in which they are presented. Public instruments are legal records, drawn up formally by a notary pub- lic, a special type of lawyer commissioned to undertake their creation. By Record of the Note of Protest made by going to see Sankey, the crew obtained a universally recognised attesta- George Swayne before Percy Edward tion of their story of the P J Palmer’s fate, that by 1896 had already had a Sankey, 27 July 1896 [R/U774/O7]. long and venerable history.

Notaries were introduced in by John Pecham, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1279-1292. Their attraction for Pecham and for others who hired their services, would have been twofold. First would have been their status and cachet. In the medieval era, notaries derived their authority to act from one or other of its two trans -national powers: the Papacy, and the Holy Roman Emperor. A second reason for notaries’ popularity was their reputation for high standards of accuracy and impartiality, enabling them to command respect, even from the parties to a dispute.

A fine example of an original instrument can be found sewn into a Rochester Diocese Precedent Book of cir- ca 1435 [DRb/O10/1, unfoliated sheet after f.453]. The document has been reused, along with two other no- tarial instruments, as an endpaper protecting the text block containing legal precedents from the original wooden boards. The one under examina- tion was drawn up by James Cole, a notary of the Diocese of Norwich, to record an agreement made on 20 August 1428 be- tween two churchmen, from the dioceses of Norwich and Lincoln respectively. Sir Thomas Paul, perpetual vicar of the church of Stisted, Essex is involved in an ex- change of vicarages with Master John Tes- dale perpetual vicar of the church of Great Staughton, Cambridgeshire. This instru- ment records an undertaking by Paul not to molest, perturb or distress the rectors of his new church, the Prior and Convent of the Charterhouse, in anything which touched their rights regarding the said church.

Public instrument drawn up by James Cole, notary of the Diocese of Norwich [DRb/O10/1]. Consecrated to the Truth: Notaries public and their instruments

Mark Bateson, Assistant Service Manager – Archives and Local History The instrument begins with a religious invocation. Its words, In Dei Nomine Amen (‘In the Name of God, Amen’), will be familiar to anyone who has stud- ied medieval wills. They invoke divine witness for the truth of what is going to be written. The text then proceeds to describe the place and date of the pro- ceedings in meticulous detail. There are no fewer than three methods of da- ting: by anno domini year; by indiction (a secular method of dating based on cycles of years); and by the year of the pontificate of the reigning pope. The place is then described as the notary’s house in the parish of St Gregory, in the City of London.

The image of James Cole’s document illustrates the notable features of an original public instrument. The detached paragraph in the lower right corner, known as the eschatocol, contains the notary’s pledge of the accuracy of the foregoing text. He lists there the senses, sight and hearing, through which he Detail of James Coles’ notarial had apprehended the events, personally present as he had been at them, and signum [DRb/O10/1]. recounts how he had had the events written down exactly as they had hap- pened, in the place and on the date recorded in the instrument.

To the left of the eschatocol is Cole’s notarial signum, or sign. This mon- ogram was unique to the notary, a sort of trademark that only he could use. Notarial signs usually have a little text, a motto incorporated into the design. This one is an abbreviation, r.o.i.e. Examples of unabbrevi- ated mottos in the Kent Archives include that in the signum of Edward Orwell, a post-Reformation notary by royal authority, of the Diocese of London. It occurs in an instrument for the mayor and jurats of Faver- sham to exemplify a sentence delivered in their favour by the Preroga- tive Court of Canterbury on 19 May 1572, in a case over the administra- tion of the goods of Henry Hatche [CAN-U424/B2/1]. For the wider con- text of this case, see P. G. M. Hyde, ‘Henry Hatch and the Battle over his Will’, Archaeologia Cantiana 102 1985, pp111-128]. Here, the nota- ry’s name is abbreviated, to E.O., over the motto hoc veritati sacrum Edward Orwell’s notarial signum [CAN- (‘this [is] consecrated to truth’). U424/B2/1].

The commitment to truth is echoed by the motto of William Somner, Registrar and Public Notary of the Diocese of Canterbury, whose sig- num adorns an instrument he made of the documents in a case of sub- traction of tithes between Martin Culling, farmer of the rectory of the parish of Whitfield, and Henry Tomes of the parish of Nonington, from February 1625 to January 1631. The words Lucet in Tenebris Veritas, Latin for ‘the Truth Shines in Darkness’, underwrite an ornate curviline- ar design framed by Somner’s initials. [DCb-J/Z/1/10, f.333v]. They would seem to evoke or allude to a verse in the Prologue of the Gospel according to John: et lux in tenebris lucet et Tenebrae eam non com- prehenderunt ‘and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it’ (Jn 1:5). Certainly for Somner, a registrar of a dio- cese of the Church of England, truth would have been synonymous with Christ, the Light of the World. Even if not made explicit in their William Somner’s notarial signum: Lucet in mottos, the activities of all medieval and early modern notaries would Tenebris Veritas [DCb-J/Z/1/10] have been predicated on the notion that there was such a thing as Truth. The notion is increasingly opaque today, and we exist in a cul- ture of competing versions of truth. At least we can be reassured that those who drew up public instruments believed in an objective standard of truth and were prepared to measure their work and their reputations against it.

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