Appleby History > Alan Roberts > Early Modern Villagers > Vagabonds
Appleby Families: Villagers in Early Modern Times
Part 10: Vagabonds, Itinerants, Squatters and Illegal Immigrants
by Alan Roberts
Short term movements of people into and out of rural parishes must now be accepted as normal for pre-industrial times. Migration was a natural response to outbreaks of disease or food shortage, acting as a kind of 'safety valve' for excess population. Population movements into and out of Appleby are revealed by the population estimates and the appearance of new names in the register and other records. Local studies show that only a minority of midland families remained in the same parish for more than two generations. On the fifteenth-century estates of the Bishop of Worcester, for example, three-quarters of the household surnames were replaced within six decades. W.G. Hoskins suggests that by 1525 only one in ten families in Leicestershire had patronymic links to one parish extending back more than five generations. The fact that only four in every ten of the 221 deponents cited in Lichfield court depositions between 1660-1665 stayed in their original parish suggests that this trend continued, or even accelerated, in the post-war period. Peter Laslett's thorough analysis of two household listings made by the rector of Clayworth in Northamptonshire in 1676 and 1688, emphasises the point even more strongly, estimating that up to forty per cent of the population of that parish may have emigrated. In the light of these findings the evidence of migration in Appleby does not appear unusual.
In Appleby there is a noticeable disparity between the natural growth curve and estimates from the Protestation listing, hearth tax returns and the 1676 census, suggesting that Appleby experienced its greatest losses from migration in the 1660s and 1670s. Instead of more than doubling in the four decades between 1603 and 1642, there was only a twenty per cent increase in the number of people in the parish, barely half the natural increase. Later estimates suggest that Appleby's population shrank from about 450 to 400 between the 1642 Protestation Oath listing and the1676 Compton census. Registrations show a natural increase of 100 persons in this period so emigration, both of single persons and family groups can be blamed for the loss of as many as 150 people between the two dates.
What had begun as a mere trickle of emigrants before the Civil War expanded into a minor torrent after 1642, judging from the widening gap between natural growth and census estimates. It is possible there was burial under registration but it seems more likely that more families left the parish after 1642 than before. The increase in householders' surnames among the baptismal entries also shows a compensatory influx of new families entering Appleby after 1642. The range of family surnames in most midland parishes was continually altered by natural turnover. Some new surnames were introduced by marriage. Others were lost as families stayed in one place for a while before moving on. Allowance must also be made for a natural wastage of surnames through families that became extinct for want of a male heir. Nevertheless, migration can be held responsible for a significant proportion of surname gains and losses. The period 1642-1700 saw the replacement of more than half the household surnames In Appleby, the number of different surnames in the baptism entries jumps from thirty-eight in the 1630s to sixty in the 1660s. The scale of immigration is dramatically shown in a comparison of surnames from the Protestation listing with those of householders recorded in the parish register between 1698 and 1707. Both lists provide particularly good coverage of householders in 1642 and 1700 respectively. Only twenty-nine of the 59 surnames from 1642 appear in the register after 1698: forty-six of the 75 surnames recorded between 1698-1707 were therefore new to the parish since 1642. In 1700 only about a third of Appleby residents had patrynomic links to the Tudor parish, a quarter of the new arrivals were new to the parish since 1642 and only four of the family surnames introduced into Appleby after this date were recorded after 1700.
Peter Clark's study of Kentish migrants suggests that most would fit into one of two categories: moving for either 'betterment' or subsistence'. At one end of the migrant social spectrum were wealthy yeomen and retired gentry snapping up vacant freeholds; at the other were dispossessed smallholders, labourers and craftsmen driven from their native parish by enclosures, crop failures and disease. A.L. Beier has found that more than half the vagrants in Elizabethan England were single males, the greater proportion of them labourers, servants and clothworkers. The population crises in the midlands in the 1620s and 1630s forced hundreds of people out of their parishes in search of a livelihood. Unemployed labourers, craftsmen, dispossessed widows and soldiers' wives appear fleetingly in constables' accounts and other records as recipients of poor relief. The same sort of people crop up in settlement certificates as illegal 'squatters' or 'vagabonds' harried from parish to parish by anxious overseers of the poor.
Thirteen of the 30 labourers and at least three of the seven leatherworkers in the Appleby register after 1698, were recent arrivals to the parish. Almost all of the 14 clothing workers (including the 'garsie-comer' and the 'tow dresser') were locals, born in Appleby. The exception was John Brown, who is described in the register as a weaver from Wigginton. These figures show that cottage craft industries were well established in Appleby by the second half of the seventeenth century.
The craftsmen and labourers who found work in the parish were the more fortunate immigrants. A considerable proportion of new arrivals were destitute families or individuals who had neither work nor shelter apart from that grudgingly given by the overseers of the poor. The exact extent of this 'submerged' population of immigrant poor is not easily measured. The Appleby churchwardens' and constables' accounts, which might throw some light on the matter, have perished. Few itinerants stayed in the parish long enough to register baptisms or burials. But vagrants and squatters certainly posed a vexing problem for parish officials both before and after the Civil War. An ecclesiastical visitation of Appleby in 1635 records that certain 'vagabond persons' had encamped in the churchyard, to the evident displeasure of the minister and his flock. A few years later, in August 1639, Lawrence Scholler and his wife Ellen, who are described in the register as 'tinkers' (possibly gypsies) recorded the baptism of their daughter Doris in Appleby. We do not know whether or not the Schollers settled in the parish, but the absence of any further reference to them in the parish records suggests that they were forced to move on.
Increasing numbers of exempt households in the hearth tax returns from the 1660s and 1670s highlight a growing problem of illegal settlement in the midlands. Many of the families listed on exemption certificates, recording householders occupying ground worth less than 20s a year, were squatters. Although not all immigrants were included on these certificates (some were automatically exempt) and not all of those exempt were immigrants the concentrations of poverty they reveal provide information about the general drift of pauper migration. The hearth tax map shows the largest concentrations of poor householders in the local market towns of Ashby, Atherston and Tamworth with especially high proportions in the two populous coalmining parishes immediately adjacent to Appleby. Local JPs had noticed as early as 1628 an 'extraordinary great' number of poor in Atherstone compared to some of the neighbouring towns which had very few or no poor in them'. Destitute families were erecting makeshift cottages in Ridge Lane in 1639 while others had settled near the coal delphs and stone quarries in Wilnecote and Polesworth. By 1650 this corner of Warwickshire was swarming with 'a multitude of poor impotent persons and others that are not able to work and yet wander up and down and thereby become rogues and vagrants'. The constables record 25 exempt householders in Appleby (about 27 per cent of those assessed) in 1670. While there are undoubtedly omissions and inaccuracies in these exemption lists there can be no mistaking the extent of the problem faced by parish officials. Mixed farming parishes attracted poor families being pushed out of pastoral and forest areas by enclosure and the sudden arrival of destitute families was bound to alarm the villagers. While those among the able-bodied poor who were able to support themselves by some sort of work were tolerated, the fear of destitute families becoming a charge upon the parish led to prosecution.
The 1662 Settlement Act attempted to prevent parishes being swamped by destitute people, by giving overseers of the poor the right to evict squatters who had no prospect of work within forty days. The result was an increase in forced evictions and a series of contentious wrangling as to the last place of lawful settlement of those charged. Some idea of the extent of illegal settlement in Appleby after 1660 is provided by a series of settlement disputes dealt with in the Leicestershire quarter sessions. A few of the unwanted immigrants were long-distance travellers. In 1678, for example, the Leicestershire justices returned one Appleby squatter to Newborough in Staffordshire. Another poor woman was sent from Appleby to Whitwick in 1692, then moved again when the overseers there refused her leave to settle. A destitute mother with two young children who travelled from Hinckley to Appleby. then to Cossingham and finally to Rothley, found herself shunted back to Hinckley in 1716, as each parish in turn disclaimed liability for her support. In the adjacent parish of Austrey the poor seem to have been treated more leniently, one being given leave to erect a cottage' in some convenient place upon the waste' subject to the consent of the lord of the manor.
Sources and Notes
C. Dyer, Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society: the estates of the Bishopric of Worcester, 680-1540 (Cambridge, 1980), 366.
W.G. Hoskins, 'Galby and Frisby' in Essays in Leicestershire History
(Liverpool, 1950), 36. (counting names in the subsidy rolls)
Lichfield depositions in L.J.R.O. Cause Papers, B/C/5 (1660-85); Clark's table shows that at least half of the deponents from West Midland parishes migrated in this period: P. Clark, 'Migration in England during the late Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Centuries', Past and-Present, 83 (1979), 64-5; Cf. J. Cornwall, 'Evidence of Population Mobility in Seventeenth Century England', BIHR, 40 (1964), 143-52.
P. Laslett, 'Clayworth and Cogenhoe' in, Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations (Cambridge, 1977i, 65-6; earlier figures supplied by Laslett in 1963 have been reworked by W.R. Prest who suggests that at least 8 of the 98 householders in Clayworth migrated between 1676-88: 'Stability and Change in Old and New England - Clayworth and Dedham', JIH, vi No. 3 (1976), 363.
L.R.O. Archdeaconry Court Proceedings, 1D 41/4/XVI/132-5.
WCR Hearth Tax Returns, Hemlingford Hundred I, lxxvii; Walker's figures suggest that 40% of Hemlingford Hundred householders were exempt from the hearth tax: Ibid., lxxvi.
WCR Quarter Sessions Order Book I, 63, II, 43, V, 160-1
In Wilnecote (Tamworth) 18 cottages on the common 'neere the colepitts' (1670): WCR Hearth Tax Returns I, 112.
WCR Quarter-Sessions Order Book III, 78-9; Rogues included 'persons calling themselves scholars'. 'idle persons', 'fortune tellers' and 'wandering persons and common labourers being able in body and refusing work': Ibid., III, 312-3; Some saw the county was 'yearly eased of so many who by reason of ill circumstance would rather a Burden, than advantage to their neighbours; especially those places that have more hands than work': Dedicatory sermon by William Basset to the Warwickshire Meeting, 1679, cited in P. Morgan (ed.), Warwickshire Apprentices in the Stationers Company of London, 1563-1700, Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, 25 (1978)
cf. Austrey records ten exempt households in 1663, fifteen (18 per cent) in 1670 and twenty (25 per cent) in 1674. Measham and Polesworth each had more exempt than non-exempt households in 1670, while Ashby and Tamworth exempted 23 per cent and 39 per cent of their inhabitants respectively, WCR Hearth Tax Returns I, 2; P.R.O. E 179/332, E 179/245/10 (1664), Exemptions for Leics. and Derbs. parts of Appleby combined.
Measham records 67 out of 112 households exempt, 1664 (E 1791245/10 Polesworth, 50 out of 95 exempt, 1670: WCR Hearth Tax Returns I, 101.
A.L. Beier, 'Vagrants and the Social Order', loc.cit., 21.
WCR Quarter Sessions Order Book II, 83-4.
L.R.O. Quarter Sessions Order Book II, f3, f151, III, f88, f242; Cf. Sir John Moore's submission that new masters for the Grammar School in Appleby be single men for fear that they became a charge upon the parish on so small a salary: L.R.O. DE 1642/46.
WCR Quarter Sessions Order Book II, 174, 182
©Alan Roberts