21st May 1382. John Wycliffe.

Lutherans in emphasising ‘Faith’ as opposed to ‘Grace’, took their cue from the New Testament Romans 1:17: ‘The Just shall live by faith’; thus righteousness before God is not to be had by achievement, but a gift of a ’Justification by Faith‘, the crux of the Protestant Reformation.

Moves towards reform of the Church of Rome came from a variety of sects and a Synod was convened Today in 1382 by archbishop William Courtenay in Blackfriars, London, to discuss the emerging Lollards. (1)

Condemned were the 24 theses of their founder, John Wycliffe and  the 1379 Treatise de Eucharistia, which opposed Transubstantiation.

Known as  the ‘Earthquake Synod’, so called because an earthquake shook the area at the time, Courtenay was to have great influence in governance and in the eradication of the Lollards, which came in no small way from his aristocratic parentage, his aggression, and probably most importantly in the weak reign of Richard II.(2)

Wycliffe scorned overfed, idle clergy at a time of plague and wars, the cause of much tension in the 13th and 14th centuries, and disputed the right of the church to levy taxes and tithes.

19thc painting of Lollards being given the Wycliffe Bible, by Yeames.

He declared the Bible, not the Church to be the highest authority and his manuscript translation into English from the Latin Vulgate, completed after his death in 1384 by John Purvey and Nicholas of Hereford, was considered a dangerous enterprise.

Later in the century, Archbishop Arundel waged war against dissent, which resulted in Henry IV’s 1401 Heresy (‘choice’ or ‘picking’) Act which sent many to the stake. It was now dangerous to read the Wycliffe Bible, except covertly.

Manchester Town Hall Mural: The trial of Wycliffe.

The defeat of Lollardry, was the task of the new king with his ‘de heretico comburendo’, the burning of heretics for questioning Holy Writ.(3)

In 1414 at the so called ‘Fire and Faggot’ Parliament held at Grey Friars Priory, Leicester, under Speaker Walter Hungerford, the main business was suppression of the Lollards: ‘That whoever should read scripture in English…Wicliffe’s learning…shall forfeit land, cattle, goods for life…condemned as heretics to God, enemies of the Crown and traitors to kingdom’.

It went on…’if they continued obstructive…they should be hanged for treason against the king and then beheaded for heresy against God’. 

Wycliffe was protected by many influential followers in life, but after his death at Lutterworth, Leics., they couldn’t prevent his bones being burnt and scattered at the behest of the 1415 Council of Constance.

As it happened multiple translations of the Bible were to come, the Reformation came in Britain as people chose to use their own minds and interpretation; free thinking which was now to drive the power of science and technology through the harsh superstition of medieval society.

(1) The Knighton Chronicle 243 describes the day as :’On the twelfth of the Kalends of June 21st May 1382 there was an earthquake…’

(2) He was a younger son of Hugh de Courtenay 10th earl of Devon, and through his mother (daughter of Humphrey de Bohun 4th earl of Hereford), he was also great grandson of Edward I.

(3) It followed from the harsh Papal decree of 1199 against heresy.

Ref:wordbook days.com.

Ref: wickipedia.org/wycliffe/Pic.

Ref: manchesterorange.co.uk/Pic of trial.

20th May 1941. Fall of Crete.

In World War II 62,000 British troops were sent from North Africa to Greece in an attempt to break the stale-mate in Europe by a push from the south.

However as well as seriously weakening the 8th Army, we were defeated after the Germans having occupied Yugoslavia had turned their attention to Greece in early April.

British and Greek forces were thus forced to evacuate to Crete three weeks before the German invasion of the island by paratroopers Today in 1941.

The Germans took only thirteen days to capture the Island, the first time that a country had been captured by airborne troops alone, which were ferried from Greece in a stream of transport planes and gliders.

Some 12,000 allied troops were captured along with their equipment, including a rearguard told to surrender, the rest scrambled aboard ships bound for Egypt, in an operation commanded by Admiral Andrew Browne Cunningham, (known as ABC), a veteran of World War I.

In an attempt to stop the overthrow of Greece, Cunningham in late March had defeated the Italian Fleet at the Battle of Matapan, after it had attacked British troop convoys from Alexandria to Piraeus.(1)

The Battle was the first victory achieved thanks to our breaking of the German Air Force, Enigma Code by Alan Turing and his team at Bletchley Park.

Thus General Freyberg VC the Crete allied commander having foreknowledge of the raid, through this intelligence, on being told by Colonel Woodhouse, (later Lord Terrington), that the sky was full of German aircraft, nonchalantly replied, ‘They’re dead on time’. Woodhouse later recalled, he then returned to his toast.

The disaster of Crete constituted such a set-back that Churchill was to say later, it was only one of two times that he had a sleepless night.(2)

The novelist Evelyn Waugh who served in Crete at the time used the experience in his Sword of Honour trilogy.

 

(1) The Battle of Matapan took place on 28th/29th March.

Cunningham went on to become First Sea Lord and was the last admiral to command a major theatre of war from a flagship whilst exercising tactical control of the Fleet.

(2) The other was the loss of the ships Repulse and the Prince of Wales off Singapore.

References:

wikipedia.org/matapan and invasion of Crete.

alamy.com/Pics

19th May 1337. Old and New Money Departs.

Needwood Forest in Staffordshire, once the home of the wolf and boar was enclosed following the 1803 Enclosure Acts which saw over 9,000 acres deforested.

Affecting the rights of local commoners, the land was carved up between the big landowners.

Thorn was planted as coverts for game and hunting lodges were now inhabited by those looking for fashionable picturesque cottages, the sylvan retreat for poets, philosophers and painters.(1)

Cottage in Needwood Forest. Painting by Wright of Derby 1790.

It was different in medieval times when Today in 1337 the Chief Forester (Judge) of Needwood Forest) dealt with several cases of infringement of Forest Law. One victim was the Rector of Tatenhill who was fined 12 pennies for trespassing 140 sheep. Another of Tatenhill was fined 2 shillings for stealing three tops from fallen oak trees near Byrkley Fishpond. 

The powerful landowners de Ferrers. earls of Derby, were lords of the area after the Conquest, based at Tutbury Castle, with Needwood Forest their preserve as the collective estate of the Honour of Tutbury.

 

In 1267 Thomas de Byrkley, 1st Baron, of Berkeley Castle was Keeper in the Tutbury Ward married Joan de Ferrers daughter of William de Ferrers 5th Earl of Derby who was to lose his estates when he allied with the rebel de Montforth against the King Henry III.

This resulted in Edmund Crouchback, his son, taking the estates as earl of Lancaster to became the hunting Forest and Chase of the Duchy of Lancaster until Henry IV in 1399, when it became a possession of the Crown. Officers included a lieutenant or Chief Ranger four Keepers, and axe-bearer. There was an annual Court of the King’s Steward with 24 residents as Jury for encroachments, trespass and poaching of venison.(2)

The Ferrers connection with the area continued when in 1677 Charles II ended the abeyance of the barony of Chartley so a de Ferrers became 13th Baron of Chartley.

In 1751 Lady Charlotte Compton grandniece of the new creation 1st earl Ferrers married Lord George Townshend of Rainham.

Three years later Charlotte had inherited Tamworth Castle and succeeded to the Ferrers Barony and acquired the leasehold of Byrkley Lodge as a hunting seat.(3)

Game laws were zealously maintained with man traps and spring guns and after 1817 a poacher without lights and unarmed could be transported for seven years.

Byrkley Lodge rebuilt 1887-91. Demolished 1952.

Now part of Needwood was invaded by new money namely the Bass brewing family who built Rangemore Hall, and rebuilt Byrkley Lodge (1887-91) for Hamar Bass, whose son William succeeded to his uncle’s baronetcy.

Rangemore Hall built for Michael Arthur Bass, the grandson of the founder of brewers, Bass ,Ratcliffe and Gretton in the 1850.s.

The Bass Family as their predecessors moved on: Byrkley Lodge was demolished in 1952, the remnants of the garden buildings becoming a garden centre; Rangemore Hall became a school for the deaf, with the related Bass and Baillie families absconding to their Scottish estates. 

However there is still a Byrkely Street in nearby Burton-on-Trent, the Author’s home town, to remind us of those days.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi indeed.

(1)  ‘The Fall of Needwood Forest’ by the Swan of Lichfield Anna Seward described the forest after enclosure. (1).

(2) Tutbury Castle was the centre of Wapentake of Appletree which included Duffield Frith.

(3) On a 1775 map only Byrkley, Yoxall Lodge are shown on the Needwood Forest plateau came into the hands of the Duchy of Lancaster and Hanbury Park Farm. (4)

References:

burton-on-trent.local history.Needwood/Pics

wikipedia,org/Pic of Wright painting.

18th May 1725. Badges of Fealty.

The notion of knightly chivalry lives on in the Order of the Garter, the most senior British Order of Chivalry,  followed by the Thistle and the Bath.(1)

The Order of the Bath was founded under Letters Patent under the Great Seal Today in 1725.

Knights in medieval times, in a Rite of Passage, were purified by being given a ceremonial bath, and as the Order of the Garter had certain affiliations with valour, chivalry and allegiance.

However ‘The Noble Order’ was used by Sir Robert Walpole as a source of patronage in an honours system, which increasingly in the number of awards, is still the case today.(1)

Distinguishing emblems for medieval knights was the banner which developed into regalia and Livery Badges, especially in the troubled times following the deposition of Richard II, and the Wars of the Roses, when factional conflict saw the wearing of chains of allegiance.

Thus we get the ‘SS Chains’ (Esses) of Lancaster and the Yorkist collars of suns and roses, with the white lion of the March Family and the bull of the Clare’s, along with the white boar of Richard of York, later Richard III.

However this could lead to trouble, as football scarves can today, as experienced by a retainer of the unpopular John of Gaunt, Sir John Swinton, who unwisely rode through London wearing the Gaunt Badge on a Livery Collar of the Lancastrian ‘Esses’, and was pulled from his horse.

Later in the reigns of the three Henry’s in the 15th century, the ‘SS’ badge was embellished with a white-swan pendant.

The effigy of Ralph FitzHerbert (who died in 1483), at Norbury, Derbyshire, bears the Yorkist livery collar of alternating suns and roses with the white boar of Richard as a pendant.

Sir Thomas More wearing a chain of Esses and the Tudor Rose, badge of Henry VIII. Franz Holbein the Younger 1527.

Henry VIII brought back the SS chain with a portcullis or Tudor rose as pendant. His son the young Edward VI had a collar of red and white roses, demonstrating the union of Lancaster and York royal houses.

Dunstable Swan c 1400, in gold and white and black enamel.

The oldest effigy bearing the SS is at Spratton Church on Sir John Swinford dated 1371 and a white-swan pendant was later discovered at Dunstable, Beds., known as the Dunstable Swan Jewel Livery Badge.

’Dubbing for Knighthood’, can be seen in the romantic painting by Edmund Leighton (1852-1922) entitled, ‘The Accolade (1901).

(1) Regarded as the first Prime-Minister.

References:

wikipedia.org/Orders and Badges of Livery/Pic of More.

wikipedia.org/leighton painting.

britishmuseum.org/dunstable swan.

 

17th May 1527. The King’s Problem.

By late 1520 Henry VIII wanted to have his marriage annulled, a couple of sons had died leaving the future of the Tudors in doubt.

Henry was convinced that the lack of a male heir resulted from being,’blighted in the eyes of God’, as he had married Catherine of Aragon, his dead brother’s widow, and determined to be rid of her saying his marriage had never been valid. (1)

The problem was an annulment required special dispensation from Pope Julius II so it was Today in 1527 that Archbishop Warham began a secret inquiry, at Greenwich, as a first step in the annulment proceedings.

As archbishop his role, was to say the least delicate, and not since the days of Becket had an archbishop’s dual loyalty to his spiritual and temporal lord been so sorely tested. It was he who suggested the addition of the words ‘so far as the law of Christ allows’, to Henry’s title Supreme Head of the Church.

Clement VII, now Pope, was also reluctant to annul the wedding, probably influenced by the fact that the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, was Catherine’s nephew.

Many advised Henry to ignore Rome, but a meeting of clergy and lawyers in 1530 advised parliament against such a move also the influential Bishop John Fisher was the Pope’s champion.

However Warham at the end stood his ground and in 1532 he gave notice that he intended to move the repeal of all statutes passed against the Roman Church since the beginning of the Parliament: Henry responded by issuing a writ of Praemunire, but luckily Warham died on August 23rd 1532, before he had to commit himself to out-and-out opposition to the king.(2)

Henry decided to take the bull by the horns and underwent a marriage ceremony in late 1532 with Anne Boleyn, made easier now Warham had died, when Henry persuaded the Pope to appoint Thomas Cranmer a friend of the Boleyn’s  as successor.

Despite the Pope’s insistence on an oath of allegiance in return, Cranmer duly granted an annulment whereupon the King and Cranmer were promptly excommunicated.

In 1534 the Act of Supremacy was enacted to be followed by the King’s acquisition of land and finances of the Catholic Church, assisted by the 1536 Court of Augmentation, along with the lesser General Surveyors, First Fruits and Tenths, Wards and Liveries, which in 1547 were amalgamated in The Court of General Surveyors. (3)

Painting by William Hamilton (1787) of the Cardinals at Grafton Regis.

In Grafton Regis, Northants, village hall, murals show Henry in his local manor house listening as Cardinal Campeggio conveys bad news in September 1529, of Pope Clement’s refusal to allow Henry an annulment.

This visit had been a last ditch attempt of Cardinal Wolsey to persuade the Pope: the downfall and disgrace of the English Cardinal was now inevitable.

Henry’s problem turned out to be an even bigger one for the Papacy, for whilst the King won another wife, Rome lost the wealth of centuries. 

(1) As there were no children it didn’t contravene Old Testament law.

(2) The Laws of Praemunire of the 14thc was a first attempt to restrict the referral of various matters to Papal jurisdiction.

(3) In 1554 all were subsumed under the Court of the Exchequer.

References:

wikipedia.org/clement_vii.

pinterest.com/Pic.

 

16th May 1947. Tryptophan.

Today in 1947 saw the death in Cambridge of Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, the biochemist who in 1901 was the first to report the discovery of the Amino Acid, Tryptophan.

He discovered from experiments with rats that ingesting fats, protein and carbohydrates were not sufficient in themselves for survival and needed supplements of trace substances, what we now know as vitamins.

He also discovered that certain Amino Acids such as Tryptophan are the building blocks in protein production, but as they are not synthesised in the body, they are needed in the diet.

Tryptophan is important in maintaining a healthy gut and immune-system, but also as the precursor for the production of Seritonin, which maintains our mental equilibrium, and Niacin (Vitamin B3).(1)

However Tryptophan uses the same means of crossing the blood-brain barrier as other Amino Acids, but being the least abundant of the Acids has to compete for access to the brain. This is where Carbohydrates are important in the diet as they divert many Amino Acids to the muscles and other parts of the body.

 

This is especially important for a good night’s sleep as Tryptophan, amongst other things relaxes the mind, so anything which enables its better access to the brain is beneficial.

Thus it has been suggested that a carbohydrate snack before bedtime could be better than say a glass of milk for example, to calm the mind.

Hopkins didn’t have an easy passage to eminence, having started work in an insurance office, studying whilst working, before being employed in the ‘labs’ at Guy’s Hospital. London and then progressing to teaching physiology to medical students.

He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1905, and the first Professor of Biochemistry at Cambridge in 1914. In 1929 he received the Nobel Prize and rewarded with the Order of Merit in 1935. A truly British, but now largely forgotten, hero.

(1)  Which also includes Tyrosine and Lysine.

(1a) Indole is a compound from coal tar and indigo  and also produced by decomposition of Tryptophan in the intestine which gives faeces their typical odour. It is excreted in the urine as Indican.

Notes:

Hopkins took 600 grams of crude Casein to produce 4-8 grams of tryptophan

References:

wikipedia.org.tryptophan.

psychologytoday.com.

draxe.com/Pic at top.

slideshare.net/Diagrams.

emma.cam.ac.uk.

 

15th May 1932. Early Days at the ‘Beeb’.

Today in 1932 Broadcasting House in London was open for business with the BBC planning a daily diet of concerts, talks and news. The last transmission from Savoy Hill was broadcast the previous day. (1)

2LO Transmitter at Science Museum.

The first broadcasting station was the 2MT transmitter in a Marconi hut at Writtle near Chelmsford, going out at 7.15 pm every Tuesday from 14th February 1922.

The team was led by Capt. Peter Eckersley, later to be employed by the BBC, the station being known as ‘Emma Toc’, as it was required to read out its allocated call-sign at intervals using the Army Phonetic Alphabet.

2MT was superseded by the 2LO transmitter sited on top of Selfridges store until Brookman’s Park with its two new transmitters took over. 

On 14th November 1922 the 2LO station was transferred to the British Broadcasting Company which took up residence at Savoy Hill, becoming a Corporation in 1927. The station  was replaced by the BBC Regional and National Programmes on 9th March eight years later.

Original Broadcasting House.

Programmes at Savoy Hill began at 10.15 am with the morning service. At 10.30 the announcer would read the weather forecast and give a short summary of the day’s programmes.(2)

Savoy Hill

From 10.45 to 11.00 am there would be a talk, generally on some domestic subject, then a close down until mid-day when programmes began in earnest until midnight.

At 10.30 pm to midnight listeners would ‘go over’ to the Savoy Hotel for dance music with Henry Hall, a tradition continued in the new building which had a large concert hall.

This was a facility somewhat lacking at Savoy Hill which had to use an abandoned warehouse near Waterloo Bridge, to become BBC No 10 Studio.

The problem was it was over-run with rats which responded to music, particularly the flute, (as they did at Hamelin), which brought them out in droves, according to reports.(3)

Early days at the ‘Beeb’ under the dour John Reith, was a time of smart accents, dinner jackets for all, and of pompous memos passed between departments commenting on suitability of potential broadcasters, and ‘unsuitable’ material.

How times have changed.

(1) Before Savoy Hill, Marconi House in the Strand was used.

(2) At Savoy Hill the walls were lined with sacking five miles long with heavy felt on the floor to reduce noise.

(3) Reference: story of The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Ref: The World Goes By F Grisewood Secker & Warburg Ltd 1953.

Ref: londonfilmland.wordpress.com/Pic of Savoy.

Ref: patrickcallaghan.co.uk/Pic of Broadcasting House.

Ref: wikipedia.org/2LO/Pic.

Ref: emmatoc.com.

 

14th May 1894. Blackpool Tower.

The wealthy had holidayed at Blackpool since the end of the 18thc taking a day to get there by stage coach from Manchester.

Blackpool Tower was opened to the public Today, Whit Sunday in 1894. Three years later the top caught fire.

In its early days it was badly maintained and subject to corrosion and even considered for demolition. However it was decided to replace the steel-work between 1921-24.

It was conceived by Blackpool hotelier and town mayor John Bickerstaffe in 1889 after a visit to the Great Paris Exhibition where he saw Eiffel’s Tower and decided to collect a committee of local businessmen together to raise the necessary funds.

On 29th September 1891 the foundation stone was laid and building took 3 years to complete, using 5 million Accrington bricks and 2,500 tons of steel. Costing £290,000 it took 200 men to build, with only one fatality.

The design was by Messrs. Maxwell & Tuke architects of Manchester who said the idea ‘was feasible and laudable’.

By 19th of February 1891 the Blackpool Tower Company was registered and land found.

Blackpool Tower, unlike the Eiffel, is not free-standing as it sits on a basement which houses the circus and Lancashire cotton bales were used in the base to give flexibility in high winds.

The Tower, with its famous ballroom, was built at 518 ft, to rival the Eiffel (completed in 1889), but was to be eclipsed by the 1900 New Brighton Tower at 568ft., later dismantled in 1921.

The illuminations as we know them, came in 1912 to celebrate the first visit to Blackpool by a member of the Royal Family.

The Bickerstaffe Family owned the Tower until 1964 when it was sold to EMI, after which it has passed through many hands.

The Tower as it today.

 

The photograph on the left shows the brick structure made of the hard, bright red, Accrington Bricks, made near the Lancashire town.

The bricks were also used for Battersea Power Station, The Empire State Building in New York and the original Edgbaston buildings of Birmingham University, thus giving the name Red Brick University.

 

 

 

wardsbookofdays.com.

wikipedia.org.blackpool_tower/Pics.

Getty Images/Pic of Tower.

13th May 1787. Riot and Transportation.

Treason, arson, drilling under arms, poaching, political activity (as in swearing secret oaths), were crimes, in the late 18thc and early 19thc, punishable by Transportation.

It was Today in 1787 that Captain Arthur Phillip with a fleet of ships set sail from Portsmouth to ‘found’ a penal colony on the east coast of what is now Australia.(1) 

At the time of the Napoleonic Wars and in the decades following, the government was increasingly worried that revolutionary fervour might spread here, especially after the bread riots and those connected with the Luddite (‘Captain Swing’) and the political reformist, Chartists.

Transportation was the favoured option for getting rid of malcontents and continued especially after the riots associated with the General Strike of 1842, which though influenced by Chartism, began with unrest of the Staffordshire miners.

It was to spread to Lancashire factories, mills and coal fields. to Dundee to South Wales and Cornwall, after the second Charter was rejected by Parliament in April.

Conditions in the growing industrial towns were dire-worse in many cases than the rural areas they had vacated. One focal point of unrest was the Staffordshire Potteries, which was to see the worst of the strikes, riots and crackdowns.

The spark came in June when W.H.Sparrow a Longton coal owner, disregarding the law, failed to a give a statutory fortnight’s notice before imposing a pay reduction, then The Earl of Granville’s pits and iron-works at Shelton tried to reduce wages in August 1842, resulting in riots and the reading of the Riot Act.

George Hotel in the days of the riots from Queen Street. Stoke-on-Trent.

On 13th August the Chartist orator, Thomas Cooper arrived in Hanley and decreed that all labour cease until the Charter was law. On the 16th the Chief Magistrate, Thomas Powys gave instructions for troops to open fire on a procession in Burslem Square.

Houses were fired included those of the magistrate, local clergymen and mine-owners, resulting in 274 being brought to trial at a specially convened Assize Court.

146 were imprisoned with fifty-four transportations. Many chose to emigrate under their own steam with local lotteries held at Hanley, with the hope of starting a new life.

Crown Bank, Hanley. c 1900.
In 1842 Cooper stayed at Yate’s coffee house nearby and spoke there.

One result of the unrest was its formative role in the development of the Trade Union Movement, with The United Branch of Operative Potters (UBOP) founded in September 1843.

Another outcome by the end of 1842 the Staffordshire County Police was formed with its first chief constable.

(1) Eventually all told via Transportation, 160,000 convicts were to be sent to the Antipodes.

Ref: North Staffs Mercury 27th Aug. 1842.

Ref: Wikipedia 1842 General Strike and Transportation.

Ref: thepotteries.org/Pics.

 

12th May 1700. Strolling Vagabonds.

Parish overseers in 1713 could reward anyone with 5 shillings for rounding up disorderly persons.

The manner by which the church exercised its authority through the Overseers of the Poor, is illustrated by the entry dated for today, in the Burton Vestry Book, in 1700.

It recorded: ‘The money collected at the Communion is to be forthwith distributed to the poor, regard to be had in the first place, to those that communicate and are frequenters of the church’ and decided by churchwardens unless ‘obstructed by lawful impediment’; there were special seats for those receiving relief.

However the law has always discriminated between the settled poor, ‘frequenters of the church’, and Vagrancy, as Vagabonds were always considered a threat to the settled life of the local community.

Since medieval times when a ‘pass’ was given to itinerants travelling through the parish, and so not liable to be a local charge.

After the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, begging was illegal, but in 1505 Henry VII instituted a hospital at the Savoy, for ’pouer, nedie people’ (sic), described by the 16thc writer Stowe, as used by ‘loiterers, vagabonds and strumpets’.(1)

His son Henry VIII again made poverty a crime when he appropriated the revenues of monasteries, which had been given in trust for the poor, resulting in increased vagrancy, requiring harsh laws to combat.

Hark! Hark!, the dogs do bark, the beggars are coming to town. Nursery Rhyme.

Then an Edward VI Act required beggars to: ‘Weare sic) openly upon him both on the breast and back of the uttermost garment some notable badge of token’. Vagabonds and gypsies were branded with a ‘V’ on the breast.(2)

The Elizabethan Vagrancy Act of 1572, specified whipping of unlicensed vagabonds Acting Troupes, which had the affect of these groups, such as Shakespeare’s, allying themselves to wealthy patrons, becoming for example ‘The King’s Men’.

Vagabonds were also fair game for Impressment as The Vagrancy Act 1597 forced disreputable men to be drafted into the navy or army.

In the age of the Hanoverian’s, George II’s Vagrant Act (1744), divided beggars between those without means, and the idle, whilst in 1796 the Tichborne Dole was stopped by magistrates owing to its abuse by outsiders, causing conflict within the parish, for whom it was intended.

With the Industrial Revolution and the post-Napoleonic-War era, vagabondage increased with the discharge of soldiers and sailors, resulting in the 1824 Act. (3)

In modern Britain, witch trials, debtors’ prisons, the pillory and executions have gone, but the 1824 legislation rolls on, (amended in Scotland), to deal with a growing problem of the itinerant homeless.

(1) John Stow had fallen on hard times after becoming a writer, but was given a ‘Licence to Beg’ by the King, as otherwise he could have been whipped as an unlicensed vagabond. Stow’s Survey of London.

(2) The late 17thc reign of William III saw the compulsory wearing of badges of red or blue cloth bearing the letter ‘P’ and the name of their parish.

(3) 21st June 1824. 5 Geo 4c 83. Amended in 1838.

References:

wikimedia.org.vagrancy_acts.

thepavement.org.uk.