The Poacher by Thomas Rowlandson. Many of his cartoons had recurring themes, the gouty squire, protective of his leg, being one of these. In contrast to the corpulence of the squire, the painfully thin poacher stands in front of him, the evidence being presented by the gamekeeper. It is damning and for the poacher transportation to Australia is in the offing. During Martin’s life time progressively severe punishment for poaching was introduced. In the 18th century it earned you a whipping, in the 19th transportation for up to 14 years. Mere possession of a rabbit net, now in the custody of the constable with his staff, was sufficient to condemn a man. As evidence, the rabbit itself was not needed. At the squires feet is his greyhound, used for hare coursing, whilst on the table lies a copy of the game laws and the book by the window is identifiable as Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England [vol 2]. Metropolitan Museum of Art New York.

Evershot.

On Wednesday the 30th May 1832 John Martin rode home from Dorchester after a week of ‘permanent duty’ with the Dorsetshire Yeomanry. During his working life John Martin, had, as his clients, both the highest lords in the land as well as the humblest farmers. The diaries are peppered with a cast of hundreds a few of whom we will meet but there is another cast, the hamlets, villages and towns of Dorset and the surrounding counties. We cannot describe them all, as even from the partial evidence that we have, Martin worked in over one hundred and twenty parishes in Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire and Wiltshire. It is appropriate to start with the one that was most important to him, his home village of Evershot.

Martin almost certainly returned home along the Maiden Newton turnpike, turning off at Kingcombe, passing through Rampisham and entering Evershot via Summer lane. As he entered the village he passed a small collection of cottages, on the edge of what had once been the common and that were given over to the use of the village poor; an early form of social housing. At the T junction which he approached we may imagine that he paused, for a little down the road to the right was the Fox Inn. Martin was no puritan and he enjoyed a drink, perhaps sometimes a little too much for on the 17th November 1832 after a visit to the inn he recorded

Whether this is the original Fox Inn is doubtful but it is in the right place according to the tithe map.

In any village lucky enough these days to have two pubs they tend to have differing clientele and the sense is that the Fox was more for the labourers than the gentry.

The Groves family were very numerous in the village and John Groves was the owner of the Fox. After a week roistering with the Yeomanry it is probable that Martin wanted just to go home and if so he would have turned left up the main road in the village -Fore Street. Running parallel and to the north of Fore street was, and is, Back lane and it was here that Jack Groves lived. On the large scale map of the area on the Wessex Explorer [1] there is, to this day, a pond behind the plot which in 1838 was owned by John Martin. Riding up Fore street the road begins to rise and with the wind in the right direction he may have caught the smell of the tanyard in a lane opposite him on the right. In 1836 the tenancy of the tanyard was bought by James Chubb and it was still an active business being “well supplied with hard and soft Water, and a Bark Engine by Wheldon with an overshot power, and very extensive Drying Lofts, Bark-Barns [and] stables.” Fortunately for Martin, it was down wind from him when the prevailing south westerly winds were blowing.

As he headed up the hill he passed the entrance to Summer Lodge, then a large house in extensive grounds, belonging to Henry Petty who bore the epithet ‘gent’ thus guaranteeing him a place in the ‘Nobility, Gentry and Clergy’ section of Kelly’s directory. In more than a few years time Summer Lodge would be occupied by Martin’s son Arthur.

Summer Lodge occupied by Arthur Martin in 1854

Fore street is lined on both sides by terraced houses with the occasional break those on the left being elevated on a stone embankment. After Summer house he passed the Evershot Free school. None of Martin’s children attended this for it was established in 1628 by one Christopher Stickland “for the instruction and breeding of men children, which were or should thereafter be born in the said town and in the parish of Frome St. Quintin, not exceeding the number of four, and for that purpose to provide some competent maintenance for a schoolmaster there successively for ever to train up, instruct, and teach the same children in good learning, true religion, and the fear of God”[2]. No entrance examination was needed but by the 19th century the criterion for admission had become even more restricted being limited to “Male children either of the kindred or blood of the benefactor, or of the name of Stickland, and born within thirty miles of Evershot.” Although he had nothing directly to do with the school, Evershot was a small community and in 1827 Martin recorded the death of its master.

This clearly came as a shock to him especially as his own age, 47, must have seemed dangerously close to that of Mr Cooper. The schoolmasters job was taken over by the Revd. Charles Coxwell the curate of the parish who in another three decades would become its rector.

Just next door to the Free School was another school- a Sunday school run by a Mr Alex Wellman who housed it in his own home which also served as the local post office for Wellman was also the post master as well as being Martin’s part time gardener. As befitted a churchwarden, Martin was a generous contributor to the school. It is believed that the same house continues to be used as the post office.

Home of Alex Wellman, Post Master and Sunday School teacher.

Nearing the end of his short trip up Fore street Martin came to his own house and grounds, a substantial estate comprising “Dwelling house, Stable, Offices, garden &c” of some three quarters of an acre and paying 4s in tithe.

Sadly the only house in the whole street that has been replaced is that of John Martin. Acorn Inn to the left.

It’s a poor quality shot taken from Thomas Hardy’s Wessex by Hermann Lea. The date is 1913. If only the photographer had aimed a little to the right we might have seen John Martin’s house. As it is we can see his wall which still survives in part today.

Had he been inclined he could have popped across to the next property which was the Acorn Inn, run by John Chubb. This was no ordinary inn. Not only was it mentioned later by Thomas Hardy in Tess of the d’Urbevilles but it also served as an office for the excise men, and occasionally as the court room for the Court Leet of the manor of Evershot and Frome St Quinton.

The Acorn Inn.

Just up the road was the church of St Osmund’s where he served as a church warden for over thirty years and which we will return to later. Opposite St Osmund’s there is a low wall, the boundary of a property named ‘Pipers Hey’. In Martin’s time the original house on the site was occupied by Joseph Crew Jennings his second cousin. The land in this area lies between two roads which taper to the point of a triangle. Near the apex of the triangle is a five acre plot of meadowland which in 1838 was known as ‘Pipershay’ occupied by John Martin. Just a bit further down Fore Street is an imposing building which was owned by his cousin William Jennings Jnr.

The view from the St Osmund’s down Fore Street.

St Osmund’s.

The largest house in the area belonged to William Jennings Jnr and there are numerous entries where Martin dined with his cousin.

Today, the Poor houses have gone and so has the Fox inn, Summer lodge is now a country house hotel and the school is now a private residence, but the terraced houses, the post office, the Acorn inn, the church, Melbury House and the William Jennings’s house Crew Jennings’s wall are all still in existence. Martin’s house had been replaced by two semi-detached houses and a part of his garden appears to have been given to the Acorn but there is a remnant of what was probably the original boundary wall of the property and I like to think though that the magnificent Cherry tree in the garden was planted by him.

Part of Martin’s garden appears to be owned by the Acorn. This beautiful cherry tree is in his part of the land. The tithe apportionment describes his plot as “Dwelling House, Stables, Offices Garden etc”. It occupied 3/4 of an acre and paid 4s in tithe.

Pigot’s Directory of 1830 describes Evershot [3]  as ‘a neat and clean little place without possessing any thing worthy of especial notice.’ It had not always been quite so obscure, in earlier centuries, about 1503, the village had been granted the privilege of holding a market and thus became a town. At some stage it had acquired a number of fairs, a three day event beginning on St Phillip’s day [1st May] and another on the “eve, day and morrow” of St Osmunds day – 15th July. By John Martin’s day, the only thing of note remaining was a single days fair on 12th May devoted to ‘Bullocks and Toys’.

Pigot’s was being a little unfair, for in its own way Evershot was a very important economic hub. The most notable of the five hundred or so inhabitants were listed by Pigot’s according to rank. Pride of place were the ‘Nobility, Gentry and Clergy’. In a strangely egalitarian way they are listed alphabetically, and the most important person in the area Henry Stephen Fox Strangways, third Earl of Ilchester, is relegated to fourth on the list. The Ilchester estates were massive, scattered throughout south west England, and very possibly beyond, their full extent is not publicly known. Melbury House was more than just a grand house it was the centre of an economic power house that provided work and employment for thousands one of whom was John Martin. On the day after his return from Blandford he made up the Yeomanry accounts in the morning and went to see the Earl in the afternoon,

luckily for him this was not to arduous, just a short ride down Fore street and then just as he was leaving the village, a driveway led, indeed still leads up to the house.

Melbury House, seat of the Earls of Ilchester. Hutchins History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset. 3rd edition 1861

Parishes.

In 1833 Dorset was divided into “9 Divisions; 35 Hundreds; 22 Liberties, and 8 Boroughs; also into 241 Parishes; 41 parochial Chapelries; 5 extra-parochial Places, and 3 Tithings and Hamlets, which maintain their own poor; and it contains 20 Towns; 404 Tithings; 253 Vills; 244 Hamlets, and 617 Farms and Lands.”

With such a bewildering list of possible terms to describe the countryside it is difficult to know what term to use when describing these places.[4][5] Our story has to start somewhere and it is convenient to start with the Anglo-Saxons who appear to have introduced manors to the country together with the open field system of farming. How the land was divided and allocated and by whom, at least in the early centuries, is not known and in any case the situation was modified and developed under the Norman yoke.

Parishes [“that circuit of ground which is committed to the charge of one parson, or vicar, or other minister having care of souls therein”[6] came later, although once again, precisely when is unknown. Whereas parishes could contain several manors it was unusual for a manor to straddle more than one parish and frequently manors and parishes had boundaries that were co-terminus. A parish would often have a mixture of habitations within it. Larger communities were generally known as villages whilst more isolated and sparsely populated areas were known as hamlets. One of the consequences of inclosure was for farms to move out of the centre of the village but even before inclosure Hutchins is full of references to isolated farmsteads that were ‘formerly a manor’.

By the 19th century manors had frequently decayed in their functions [see later section] and the parish was dominant. There were then, in one form or another, hundreds of other ‘Evershot’s’ in Dorset. Had it been possible to view the county from above it would have resembled a massive patchwork quilt of fields with, scattered amongst them like raisins in a bun, were the dwelling places of the people. Invisible parish boundaries divided them into a range of sizes, from those of no more than a few hundred acres, to those with several thousand or more. Between the habitations was a meshwork of minor roads serving the purposes of the farmers but generally not part of any interconnected through routes. Nor were these roads signposted; if you had to ask where a road went it probably meant you did not need to go there. From the mid 18th century this picture changed slightly with the construction of the turnpikes and the introduction of finger post signs in 1773 but even then many parishes remained distant from one. Even today these villages are isolated; one can well imagine that in Martin’s day the inhabitants rarely saw a stranger from one year to the next.

In this regard Evershot was slightly different. Rebellion at Exeter in 1549 had led Mary Tudor to order the upgrading of the road from London to Exeter running through Salisbury, Shaftesbury, Sherborne and Yeovil. This, together with a similarly maintained road from Salisbury running through Blandford and Dorchester to Exeter meant rapid communications with London. In the 17th century mail carts between London and Dorchester had taken two days; by 1830 the whole journey to Exeter could be made by “Fly Van” in about seventeen hours, although the more solid and stately mail carts could take another five hours or so.[7] We should be under no illusions though about the speed of most coaches. The Royal Mail coach to Southampton left Dorchester at 7pm and arrived at Blandford at 8.30 pm whilst the ‘Red Rover’ left Dorchester three days a week at 08.30 and pulled in to Yeovil at 11.30 on it’s way to Bristol.The capacity of these coaches varied, up to 13 with the driver and assistant has been recorded on some non-mail coaches, but the fact they only ran three times a week meant that they were probably never at full capacity. Despite these limitations the close proximity of Evershot to the turnpikes meant that Martin had excellent communications with London, vital for him during the period of his his tithe commutations.

A Laden Stage Coach outside a Post House. Thomas Rowlandson Metropolitan Museum of Art NY.

Like snowflakes the physical appearance and size of each parish differed, but in so far as the essential functions of the parish was concerned they were almost identical and this gave them a curious equality. No one parish could be regarded as more important than another. We don’t usually think of parishes as having a function but in Martin’s time their functions extended over virtually every aspect of the villagers life and it is in this respect that John Martin’s world differed so widely from ours. In towns the power of the parish was mitigated to some extent, by ease of travel as much as anything, but in the country, until the end of the 19th century their power over the lives of the parishioners was almost paramount.

Entitled a “Puddle” Village this could be almost any village in Dorset. Not much has changed even today ; all that is missing are the numerous parked cars which now obscure the view. From Highways & Byways of Dorset by Sir Frederick Treves 1906 Picture by Joseph Pennell.

Any community of people has a number of problems it needs to address. The most important of these is the need to provide sufficient food for itself. Communities had no choice but to be self sufficient and after the development of the manor this particular function was controlled by the lord of the manor. Through him land and dwelling houses were apportioned to the villagers in amounts that they could farm and which would support their families. In time this would lead to the feudal system with it’s complex system of obligations and land tenures. To regulate conduct within the parish, Manorial courts were established which, amongst other things, directed the course of agriculture in the parish, kept a record of the tenancies and punished malefactors.

With time however the feudal system declined and although the tenures remained, feudal obligations were eventually abolished in 1660 whilst sporadic sales of manorial lands began to compromise the integrity of manors and in many parishes the functions of the manor decayed and a new [8],institution, the ‘Vestry’, took on their civic responsibilities. As it’s name suggest this new institution met in the vestry of the church, no doubt other venues such as Inn’s were considered too profane for the tasks involved, and there was as yet no other communal meeting place such as a village hall.

Many important social functions fell to the vestry to organise. Some were purely practical; it was the vestry who recommended a villager to oversee road mending, another to be appointed to ensure the hedges and fences were maintained or to impound stray livestock. Some parishes were also ‘tythings’ and the Vestry appointed a villager as a kind of unofficial policeman whilst the churchwardens [also appointed by the vestry] and the clerical incumbent acted as the moral guardians of the parish.

The most important role of the vestry however was to ensure that the terms of the Poor Law were complied with. The amount of relief, how it was to be distributed and to whom were, to a large extent, determined by the vestry. At it’s most extreme the vestry, through the provisions of the various settlement acts, could also determine if a villager could travel to another parish to reside. Perhaps most distressingly of all if you did find work in a neighbouring parish your new parish could arrange for your forcible removal to your home parish if you did not have the right paperwork.

The vestry was perhaps the closest thing to real democracy that there has ever been and it existed in every parish, large or small, rich or poor.. Indeed a famous historian, Sir Arthur Bryant was so impressed with it that he wrote the following; “The cradle of our liberties was the village…Centuries before universal suffrage was ever dreamt of we were governing ourselves…the local community was the only real authority: the parish was the unit of government”. [9] There were downsides to the vestry; the poor in particular were subject to the whim of the local rate payers and no doubt old scores could be settled. Their plight will be explored when we come to John Martin’s poor law work. Nor was every villager eligible to be a member of the vestry; in towns particularly, the number of people who could take part was so large that numbers had to be restricted usually by increasing the property qualification. This led to a self selecting [and thus self-perpetuating] elite of freeholders, lease holders or rate payers and came to be known as the ‘select vestry’.

The Select Vestry By British Cartoon Prints Collection – Library of CongressCatalog: http://lccn.loc.gov/2006691072Image download: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3a20000/3a21000/3a21600/3a21621r.jpgOriginal url: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a21621, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31801093

The select vestry became synonomous with nepotism, corruption and waste but I am pleased to say that this does not seem to have been a problem in Evershot. Women, if they were landowners, not infrequently attended vestry meetings but I have not come across any who were granted one of the parish offices, or got to vote.

Members of a vestry had little opportunity to escape their social responsibilities; you would be expected to take part. This was no form of tokenism; these people were obliged to fulfil their roles themselves, “Every householder had to serve his year as an administrator of the nations business. Unpaid with little option of escape and almost certainly reluctantly he had to take his turn in one of the parish offices or to provide an efficient substitute….For a year the mantle of authority rested on his humble and unlettered shoulders… During the year of his office he may not have shown himself a particularly good administrator -often he must have been a ludicrously bad one—but he learnt a great deal. At the end of his year he went back into the general body of the village community with what he had learnt. He transmitted it to his children.”[10]

Martin was to take his part in the function of Evershot as Churchwarden and Overseer of the Poor but at least he escaped one of the most dreaded jobs – that of way warden. This man who oversaw the repair of the roads had no choice but to accept the job. It was so unpopular that the man would be fined if he refused to accept the job.

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