WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY SQCIETY 1Recorbs JBrancb VOLUME XVII FOR THE YEAR 1961 Impression of 350 copies WILTSHIRE APPRENTICES AND THEIR MASTERS 1710-1760 EDITED BY CHRISTABEL DALE WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY N. 1. WILLIAMS © Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society Records Branch 1961 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY NORTHUMBERLAND PRESS LIMITED GATESHEAD ON TYNE CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION vii WILTSHIRE APPRE.\;TicEs I INDEX OF MASTERS 179 INDEX OF OCCUPATIONS AND DESCRIPTIONS 203 INDEX OF PLACES 209 LIST OF MEMBERS 219 PUBLICATIO_\'S OF THE BRANCH 223 INTRODUCTION The County Registers from which the entries in this volume have been abstracted form part of the series of Apprenticeship Registers among the records of the Board of Inland Revenue in the Public Record Olfice [l.R.1., Volumes 41-53]. These registers record the payment of duties on apprentice- ship indentures which came into force on 1 May I710 as a result of an Act of the previous year.‘ Apprenticeship already had a long history in England before the Eliza- bethan Statute of 1563 made it compulsory for all artificers, but it was left to the Parliament that impeached Dr. Sacheverell to develop it as a source of national income. This taxation was a product of the French War, when many experiments were being made and, as with so many kinds of emergency duties, it remained in force for a century. Duty was liable on all indentures at the rate of 6d. in the £ on premiums of £50 and under, and IS. in the £ on larger sums. It was normally payable by the master or mistress, except in cases where an apprentice was placed out at public charge or charity; though 2s. 6d. was in fact paid when William Bond ‘a poor boy of Marl- borough Charity School’, was apprenticed to a Ramsbury cordwainer? \Vhen masters refused to pay the duty, the apprentices or their parents were encouraged to do so to save themselves from possible prosecution. In the few cases in which the apprentice's parent paid the duty, the first payment of duty was itself taxed as well as the premium; when Robert Raines was placed with a Salisbury attorney in 1721, his mother paid 4s. duty on the £80 premium plus 21/2d. duty on the 45.3 The procedure was laid down in the Act in detail. Masters and mistresses who took apprentices fifty miles or more from the Limits of the Weekly Bills of Mortality in London" were to bring their copy of the indenture to the local collector within two months of its execution. They were to ensure that the full premium, including the value of anything directly or indirectly ‘ It was imposed for five years by 8 Anne c. 5 sect. 40, ‘made perpetual ’ by 9 Anne c. 21 sect. 7, but repealed by 44 Geo. III c. 98. See Commons journals, 1708-11. pp. 296, 626. S. Dowell, History of Taxation and Taxes, (1884), Vol. 2, makes no mention of the tax. 2 Below no. 280. 3 No. 1942. Cf. no. 2337. ‘The series of Town Registers relating to apprentices in London and the home counties is somewhat different in form from the County series, being the result of a different administrative process. It has been fully discussed by Sir Hilary Jenkinson in his introduction to Surrey Apprenticeships, 1711-1731 (Surrey Record Society, Vol. 10, 1928). ' vii VIII INTRODUCTION given, was inserted in the document and to pay the ad valorem duty. The collector was to endorse his receipt on the indenture and to forward it within six months to the head oflice (the Stamp Office, 8 Lincoln's Inn New Square, London) for stamping and registration. At first local collectors or their deputies generally brought batches of indentures to London each quarter at the same time that they paid their receipts to the Commissioners of Stamp Duties. By the early 17305 the Wiltshire collector, or his deputy, came half-yearly and in the next decade his successor rarely came to London more than once a year. When the indentures had been stamped the clerks in the Stamp Office entered the main details of each document in a register. john Montagu, the solicitor to the Commissioners of Stamp Duties, became the first Registrar of the Duties on Clerks and Apprentices and was allowed £150 p.a. for his clerks who kept the register.‘ In due course the indentures were returned to the local collector, from whom masters could obtain them. There was already a rudimentary organization in the counties for collect- ing stamp duties, another branch of wartime taxation. In Wiltshire the county ‘distributor’ of stamped parchment and paper for legal documents had been since 1708 George Clemens, who had his office at Salisbury.” By 1710 he had already been succeeded by Henry Axford (also known as Oxford), when the Commissioners of Stamp Duties appointed the first collectors of the duties on apprenticeship indentures in each county, author- ising them to retain as their fee 18d. in every £ which they collected.“ Quite apart from the ad valorem duty, varying with the premium, there was a standard stamp duty of 6d. (later increased to 1s. 6d.) on each indenture; and before long Axford was selling printed forms, ready stamped. Henry Axford was by profession an attorney-at-law. His office was at Devizes, but he was assisted in the south of the county by his deputy, Walter Bennett, at Salisbury. Throughout the history of this tax the chief office remained at Devizes, and when in the course of time a deputy from Salis- bury succeeded to the main collectorship he moved to Devizes. Both the Devizes and the Salisbury offices were open for business daily, with the exception of public holidays. In 1720 Axford took as apprentice Benjamin Street of Devizes and shrewdly arranged that the boy's father, Stephen, should pay the duty on the considerable premium of 250 guineas (the highest noted in this volume), plus the duty on that sum, and the duty on that, totalling £13 6s. 31/2d.“ When Axford’s own son was apprenticed to a Bristol grocer, a few years after his death, it is worth noting that it was the master who paid the duty." Before Axford retired in 1729 Benjamin Street was already acting as his deputy at Salisbury and was now appointed ‘Cal. Treasury Books, 1712, Part 1, pp. cccxci-iv. “Ibid., 1708, Part 1, p. dcii. For stamp duties see the Act 5 and 6 Wm, and Mary c. 21. “Guy Miege, Present State of Great Britain, 1711, p. 422. “ No. 2337. 5 No. 75. INTRODUCTION ix head of the Wiltshire collection by Treasury warrant.‘ By 1741 Benjamin's father, Stephen Street, was serving as chief collector and was assisted at various times by Israel May, Elizabeth Bennett (possibly the widow of the first deputy), Thomas Martin and William Salmon. In 1750 Israel May was collector and was succeeded four years later by his deputy, Henry Williams. The first year of their operation the duties on indentures for the entire kingdom amounted to £3,792 10s., two-thirds of which was netted in the metropolis and home counties. This was but a tiny fraction of the total receipts of the Stamp Office which in that year reached £185,635.“ In Wilt- shire an average of about £36 was collected from these duties on apprentice- ship indentures in the 17205, slightly less in the early 17405 and 1750s. Four indentures relating to members of the Prior family of Keevil, 1744-50, have survived among the Chancery records as exhibits in a law- suit." The text of one of them, corresponding to entry no. 1921 below. is as follows: This indenture witnesseth that Joseph Prior of Keevil in the county of VVilts, by and with the consent of his brother and friends, doth put him self apprentice to Samuel Slade of the parish of Saint john the Baptist in the borough of Devizes in the county of Wilts, to learn his art and with him after the manner of an apprentice to serve, from the day of the date hereof for and during the full end and term of eight years from thence next ensuing and fully to be compleat and ended, during which term the said apprentice his master faithfully shall and will serve, his secrets keep, his lawful commands every where gladly do. He shall do no damage to his said master nor see it to be done of others, but to his power shall let or forthwith give notice to his master of the same. The goods of his said master he shall not waste, nor the same without licence of him to any give or lend. Hurt to his said master he shall not do, cause, or procure to be done; he shall neither buy nor sell without his master's licence. Taverns, inns, or ale-houses, he shall not haunt. At cards, dice, tables, or any other unlawful game, he shall not play. Matrimony he shall not con- tract, nor from the service of his said master day or night absent himself, but in all things as an honest and faithful apprentice shall and will demean and behave himself towards his said master and all his during all the said term. And the said Samuel Slade for and in consideration of the sum of twelve pounds and twelve shillings in hand, paid by james Prior his brother, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, the said apprentice ‘ Cal. Treasury Books and Papers, 1729-30, p, 302, 2 Details of the collection are provided by the Declared Accounts of the Pipe Office and Audit Office.