Part 13 (1/2)
”Ordered that the Overseers of Herts. Buy and Lend to the widow S---- a wheel for the purpose of setting her boy to work.”
L s. d.
Spinning Wheles for the Widow D---- . . . 0 2 9 Paid for spinning 17 lb. of flax . . . . . 0 17 6 To mending a weel . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 0 8 14 new, Spendels and wool for G----'s family
The parish accounts in the villages show that wool for spinning was supplied in small quant.i.ties, apparently by small shop-keepers who took the yarn, which was again bought by the dealers and sent away for weaving to the newly established mills--pretty much in the same way as the straw plaiting industry was managed in after years.
Occasionally spinners were dishonest, and spun short measure, and a.s.sociations were formed for punis.h.i.+ng the offence.
In every better cla.s.s house a wheel was found by which the mistress would spin the yarn, which was then sent away to be woven into the family linen, and a very necessary part of the preparation for married life was this spinning of a supply of yarn and sending it away to the weaver. A full chest of table linen was as precious to the farmers'
wives as Mrs. Tulliver found hers, and home-spun linen was as much a matter of pride as the cheese-making itself; so much so that servants in farm houses were invariably placed at the wheel to fill up their spare time.
The earnings of the poor spinners could not have been very great, for in Ess.e.x in 1770 ”a stout girl of fifteen or sixteen” was not able to earn above 6d. a day. When the industry disappeared as a wage-earning employment, parochial Workhouses turned their attention to teaching children straw plaiting, and plaiting schools were subsidised by overseers for this purpose.
Wool-combing, the next process of employment, was better paid, but later on this too disappeared from our town and neighbourhood, owing to the march of inventions, leaving the last stage of the industry, viz., the wool-sorter's occupation, which continued some time longer. This process of sorting was one which required an experienced eye to detect the different qualities of fibre, and nimble fingers to separate them.
A fleece of wool was thrown open on a bench and an expert would, with surprising speed and dexterity, separate the fibre into about four different qualities and throw them into as many baskets standing by to receive them. After this, as in the combing days, it was sent off by the {105} Wakefield wagons to the mills in the North, and buyers continued to visit Royston, and wagons load up here, until about the middle of this century, the last of the wool-staplers being Mr. Henry Butler, whose warehouse was in Kneesworth Street, where Mr. Sanders'
coachbuilder's yard now is. With the appearance of the railway our ”spinning grandmothers” were a thing of the past.
Agriculture in the Georgian era differed somewhat in its appliances, but the philosophy of it was pretty much the same as it is now. Oxen were occasionally used for team labour and were shod like horses; wheat was universally reaped with a sickle, and as universally threshed with a flail, the bent figure of the wheat-barn tasker being a familiar object in the ”big old barn with its gloomy bays and the moss upon the thatch.” An honest pride he took in his work and has found a fit memorial in the delightful _Sketches of Rural Life_ by Mr. Francis Lucas, of Hitchin, who says of the tasker and his work--
Then let our floors send up the sound, Of the swinjel's measured stroke, It makes the miller's wheel go round, And the cottage chimneys smoke.
One of the most interesting things about rural life was the common herding of the cattle, which, until the Enclosures Act came, had probably gone on from the time the Domesday Book was written, or longer. All through the ages there is the picturesque glimpse of the old herdsman with his horn, each morning and evening from May to October, making his procession to the common land of the village, past homesteads, from whose open gates the cow-kine, in obedience to the blast of the horn, walk out and join their fellows, and at evening the herd in returning dropped its ones, twos, and threes at every farmyard gate--like children going to and from school! The animation among the cattle in and about every farmyard in the village, when, after six months' silence, the herdman's horn was heard once more, was a sight to remember, and a remarkable instance of the sagacity of animals!
Farmers' wives were accustomed, up to the beginning of the present century, to attend the market to sell their cheese and b.u.t.ter, as in Derbys.h.i.+re they do now, and the work connected with the accidental discovery of the Royston Cave, it will be remembered, was for the accommodation of these good dames.
Farmers at this time had few new notions or agricultural shows to set them thinking, but farmed according to ”the good old ways,” leaving to here and there a gentleman farmer, farming his own land, such hair-brained schemes as went contrary to them, their plea being that ”farmers did not rear the worse turnips nor were longer fatting their oxen without book knowledge than they would be with it.”
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But it is when we come to market prices for the farmer's produce that we get, I suspect, at the root and origin of the smooth-sounding phrase of the ”Good old times when George the III. was King.” Of the enormous influence of peace or war upon prices then, and the excitement which news of the one or the other stirred in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of farmers and landlords as they gathered in groups in the yards of the Hull, or the Red Lion, on Royston market days, let the following picture testify--
[Ill.u.s.tration: READING THE NEWS.]
Below are given a few years of average prices of farmers' produce in grain:--
AVERAGE PRICES.
Wheat. Barley. Oats.
Year. s. d. s. d. s. d.
1785 43 1 24 9 17 8 1790 54 9 26 3 19 5 1795 75 2 37 5 24 5 1799 69 0 36 2 27 6 1800 113 10 59 10 39 4 1801 119 6 68 6 37 0 1802 69 10 33 4 20 4 1805 89 9 44 6 28 4 1809 97 4 47 0 31 5 1810 106 5 48 1 28 7 1812 126 6 66 9 44 6
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The year 1812 was a famine year, but, after this time, prices never rose so high, ranging for wheat from 75s. in 1814, and 96s. in 1817 to 44s. in 1822. Though the landlords took their share and nearly doubled rents between 1790 and 1804, the farmer had reason to remember the good old times if the following story of a Hertfords.h.i.+re farmer in 1807 be true:--
”A wealthy Hertfords.h.i.+re farmer not long ago made application to one of the clerks in the Bank of England for the loan of L800, and offered to deposit with him, as a security, a bank note of L10,000, which he then held in his hand! The clerk refused him, saying that such a thing was unusual, at the same time told him he would change it for lesser notes.