A summary of Volume XIX[GO BACK]
Publication expected in November 2004

Volume XIX (2003): 'This Little Commonwealth': the Layston Parish Memorandum Book, 1607-1647 & 1704-1748, edited by Heather Falvey and Steve Hindle

The parish memorandum book of the Hertfordshire clergymen, Alexander Strange and Thomas Heton, is a remarkable, indeed virtually unique, source for historians of the social, economic and cultural experience of the inhabitants of an English local community from the early seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth century. Few other documents are as revealing of the social and economic relationships between clergymen and their congregation.

Alexander Strange (rector of Layston c.1607-50) recorded details and opinions on a very wide range of issues of fundamental significance for our understanding of change, conflict and control in local society: the provision of charity in cash and kind; the operation of social welfare under the terms of Elizabethan legislation; the setting of the poor on work; the basis of assessments towards the parish rates; the impact of in-migration; the governance of almshouses. Details of the operation of charity-giving within the parish reveal a telling combination of benevolence and pragmatism. The transcripts of various charitable bequests clearly show how earlier parishioners, in keeping with older religious traditions, made provision for the poor. (Many of these bequests were in the form of land and property which were still being administered on behalf of the poor when the nineteenth-century Charity Commissioners made their report.) On the other hand, Strange ensured that receipt of the benefits of these bequests was dependant on the deserving poor attending divine service on Sunday. Nowhere was this specified in the original grants but an analysis of the dates on which the doles made shows that each was a Sunday. Strange's own attitude towards the poor is most clearly displayed in his 'address', which takes up 13 pages of the Memorandum Book. It seems likely that the address's intended audience was the members of the parish vestry, some of whom were accused of allowing poor migrants to reside in properties within the town and subsequently become a charge on the parish's poor rates. Other subjects recorded by Strange include donations towards the maintenance of St Peter's Chapel, which he had caused to be built in the centre of Buntingford to facilitate access to a place of worship in the town. The original parish church of St Bartholomew was situated on the other side of the River Rib, which frequently flooded, and the earlier chapel of St John within the town had become dilapidated. The parish frequently encountered problems with the maintenance of the bridge over the Rib and various disputes over parish rates levied for its repair are recorded.

Heton too showed great concern for the correct administration of poor relief in the parish and takes it upon himself to make detailed transcripts of all the parish's charities. He made notes from earlier records on the establishment of Bishop Ward's almshouses, as well as noting the changes in personnel of the Feoffees (trustees) during his incumbency. It is clear that he encountered resistance from various parishioners regarding the payment of tithes because he made exhaustive comments on the customary allocation and collection of tithe payments. Heton himself had an obvious interest in astronomical phenomena on which he made extensive notes from a wide variety of reference books. Exactly where he read these books is unclear but as he was a Cambridge M.A. he would have had access to such books at the University. (The editors have managed to locate contemporary copies of most of Heton's sources in the Cambridge University Library.)

Although historians of Hertfordshire will find much of local interest here in the intimate disclosure of detail on life in the market town of Buntingford and in its contiguous parishes of Layston, Aspenden, Throcking and Wyddial, the document is of far wider significance. It makes possible the analysis of the politics of the parish, and especially the politics of poor relief and custom, in a way that is only paralleled by the fullest of vestry books, themselves a very rare source for this period. When linked to other local sources, especially the parish registers which contain Strange's own annotations on the social status of those he baptised, married and buried, and his unpublished sermons which offer critiques of contemporary social mores, the memorandum book will be an indispensable research tool for local and social historians alike.

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