Buckinghamshire Sessions Records County of Buckingham CALENDER to the SESSIONS RECORDS VOLUME 1. 1678 to 1694 Edited by WILLIAM LE HARDY, M.C., F.S.A. AYLESBURY: Published by Guy R. Crouch, LL.B., Clerk of the Peace, County Hall. 1933. COMPILED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE STANDING JOINT COMMITTEE OF THE BUCKINGHAMSHIRE QUARTER SESSIONS AND COUNTY COUNCIL. [All Rights Reserved] Printed by HUNT, BARNARD & CO., LTD., AYLESBURY. CONTENTS PAGE Preface . vii-xxi Schedule of Offences and Punishments xxii-xxiv Calendar to the Sessions Records, 1678 to 1694. 1-508 Appendix List of Justices of the Peace for the County, 1678 to 1694 509-511 Index . 512-622 ___________________________________ PREFACE vii In October, 1930, I was asked to visit the Muniment Room at the County Hall, Aylesbury, with a view to making a report on the documents in the custody of the Clerk of the Peace and to advise as to the best method of making the information which they contained more avail- able for official use and of greater benefit to the student of economics and to the local historian. I found that the main body of early documents consisted of the following classes:— Quarter Sessions Books, commencing in 1678 and continuing to the present time. These contain the names of the Jurors, a record of the indictments setting out the nature of the offence and punishment awarded, the presentments of the Constables, Orders of Court, and recognizances. The offences with which the justices were called upon to deal mainly comprised breaches of the peace, riots, assaults, etc., refusal to attend church, neglect to repair highways and bridges, insults and opprobrious words used against the Justices, poaching, pound breach, encroachments upon the common, etc., neglect of duty by the Constables, irregular conduct by the alehouse keepers, common nuisance, etc. The Orders of Court relate to County rates, to payments from the County funds, rates for servants’ wages, repairs to highways and bridges, the appointment of County officials, etc. The recognizances were bonds entered into by persons who were charged to appear, and by those who were bound over to prosecute or to give evidence, or to be of good behaviour. Quarter Sessions Minute Books, commencing in 1727 and continuing to the present time. These books were written up in Court by the Clerk, and it was from these that the Quarter Sessions Books were subsequently compiled ___________________________________ viii PREFACE Quarter Sessions Rolls, commencing in 1701 and continuing to the present day. These rolls contain the original jury lists, indictments, presentments, recognizances and Orders of Court. Enrolments, of enclosure awards and of indentures relating to the purchase of land for County purposes, commencing in 1768. Gamekeepers’ Books, containing the lists of persons licensed for the purpose, the name of the Manor and of the Lord of the Manor. They commence in 1711. Receipt Books, recording the names of persons who received money from County funds for various purposes; which cover a period from 1758 to 1785. Treasurers’ Accounts, stretching from 1736 to 1850. Militia Receipt Books, containing a record of sums of money paid to wives and dependents of Militia men from 1762 to 1778. Subsequent to the commencement of the nineteenth century various other classes of records are preserved. Generally speaking, the documents are well preserved and in good condition, a possible exception to this being the Sessions Rolls, some of which were packed on the top of the shelves and were covered with dust: however, these are now being cleaned and pressed flat, with a view to being bound in course of time. At a meeting of the Standing Joint Committee of Quarter Sessions and the County Council, held on 7th January, 1931, it was decided that a Calendar should be compiled, com- mencing with the earliest records, i.e., the Quarter Sessions Books, and that such calendar should be comprehensive of the information contained in all classes of records in existence for the period covered by the Calendar. The Volume to which this Preface has been written is the outcome of this resolution. It covers the period from Midsummer, 1678, to Easter, 1694, and therefore deals only with the Quarter Sessions Books. The fact that Sessions records existed prior to the date of those now calendared is proved by many references to orders to the Clerk of the Peace to search the records as to ___________________________________ PREFACE ix the liability of the County in respect to various payments, and especially when Thomas Willis, Esquire, was “to have the liberty to peruse the antient Record and Books belonging to this Court, to search in what manner and by what contributions Fenny Stratford Bridge, in Newport Hundred in this County, hath been antiently repaired” (p. 334); and when the Clerk of the Peace was ordered to hand over to the Under Sheriff the “Old Books of Orders of this Court.” (p. 346). The dangerous system of putting the onus of selecting items of outstanding interest or importance upon the shoulders of the editor has been avoided, at the risk of making the volume somewhat bulky and tedious to read, but it is doubtful whether any editor living has so general a knowledge as to be able to select references which will comprehensively satisfy the ever-growing army of students and historians. The present volume therefore contains the name of every person and of every place mentioned in the original records, and refers—sometimes exceedingly briefly—to every subject, so that a student of biography or topography may rest assured that, subject to typographical errors which humanly arise, he will find a reference to his subject in the comprehensive Index at the end of the Volume, if there is any mention of it in the original records. The original books from which this Calendar is com- piled were kept with method, system, and meticulous care. Consequently, it has made the work of the Editor simpler in some ways, though more arduous in others, as it has been found extremely difficult to abridge the original entry when it has already been noted with such conciseness. The more usual routine entries have been standardized or tabulated. For the reasons above set forth, the Calendar, taken page by page, must inevitably be rather dry reading, but its value must be measured when taken in the aggregate, and from the small details which it supplies to general history rather than from the actual fresh items which it adds. In order to give the reader a general idea of the most important items which the Calendar contains, I will now refer to a few events of political, social and economic history, which must clearly have had an effect upon the lives of the ___________________________________ X PREFACE people of Buckinghamshire in the latter half of the seventeenth century. In Midsummer, 1683, reference is found to the Rye- house plot, which had been discovered in the previous June, when the grand jury and the freeholders of the County join with the Justices in expressing to King Charles their “sincere Joy for the preservation of his sacred person from a most Wicked and horred Conspiracy against the precious lives of his Majestie and his Royall Brother, James, Duke of Yorke” [p. 129]. The activities of the Duke of Monmouth are again alluded to in 1685, when a certain David Stanley was arrested as a “daungerous person” for drinking the Duke’s health in the house of John Saunders at Akeley [p. 183], and at the same sessions the Clerk of the Peace was paid £30 for “dis- tributing the King’s Commands in Relation to the late Rebellion” [ibid]. The disturbances attendant upon the coming of William and Mary (called, on page 304, “the late Revolution in this Kingdome”) may be noted from the entry in April, 1689, when “there being no dedimus for the swearing of their Majesties Justices of the Peace named in the new Commis- sion of the Peace at the opening of the Sessions, there was no writt issued to the Sheriffe of this County for the summons of a Jury” [p. 281], and at Michaelmas, 1690, when it is remarked that “forasmuch as the fines and issues of Easter Sessions last past and other Sessions before have bene pardoned by the late Act of Indempnity, whereby the Sheriff of this County has bene disabled to defray the Justices wages as by Act of Parliament he is impowered with the fines and issues of the Sessions” [p. 356]. References to the Army and Navy are numerous, mostly in cases where pensions are granted to old or maimed soldiers. Edmund Serch, for instance, is granted a pension upon the claim of “having faithfully served his Majesty 4 yeares att Tangier and being burst in the said service” [p. 205]; Richard Brugis was awarded a total pension of £8 a year for “haveinge beine a Comissioned Officer and an Eminent sufferer for his loyalty in the Late Civill Warrs” [p. 247], and this pension was increased later when he showed that he had “lost a Considerable Estate of the value of five thousand pounds and upwards” through his adherence to the Stuart ___________________________________ PREFACE xi cause [p. 260]. Another beneficiary was Thomas Cranke who “did serve his late Majesty King Charles the first in the warrs against the then Rebells in England and Scotland,” and said “that he was imprest so to do by the Constables of West Wycomb” [p. 365]. Ralph Thompson also stated that he “was imprest and sett on shipboard the Vanguard in the Warrs against the Dutch in the year 1666, and the two Fleets being Engaged on St.