Appendices: Presentments to Quarter Sessions

PRESENTMENTS.

The presentments to Quarter Sessions are sometimes very curious but always interesting; the following specimens are gathered together with the pages (in brackets) where they may be found.

Presented and fined for exposing for sale thread lace without having the words "Dealer in British Lace" printed up over the doorway or other suitable place (71).

For blocking up and making a bank across a stream so that the waters overflowed on to the highway (69, 81, 225); or spoiled the herbage on an adjoining close (119); for blocking the entrance to a watering place so that horses and cattle could not use the same (147); for obstructing a footpath by erecting walls 6 feet in height across it (108), or a hedge (146); for building up a gateway across an ancient right of way (181); and for obstructing an highway by depositing twenty cart-loads of dirt upon it and leaving the filth there for a month (147).

For polluting and poisoning streams so that cattle could not drink of the waters, by hushing for lead ore (82, 147, 188).

For not attending the parish church and receiving the Holy Communion (106, 119, 145, 211, 244, 274, 290) and the church-wardens for not duly presenting a list of those who did not attend (223); for not bringing the children to the parish church to be baptised (223. 244, 274, 290); and for refusing to send the children, apprentices and servants to be catachised (119, 290); for refusing to give appropriate thanks at the church for safe deliverance from child-birth (290); for burying the dead at some place other than in the churchyard contrary to the rites of the Church of England (223); and for not contributing towards the repair of the parish church (323).

The curate of Shap for not bidding prayer on Saints' days and for not observing the same (373); for travelling with and driving cattle and sheep on the Lord's Day (83, 145); for swearing and cursing, with a sliding scale of fines according to the degree of the offender (146).

For teaching school without a licence to the prejudice of the parish school (234); for keeping a common ale house and selling beer without a licence (374); for suffering rude and disorderly persons to frequent the taverns so that the keeper had to be suppressed from brewing and selling ale, and the Sign of his house pulled down (119, 224, 234); for uttering false money (333); for keeping guns and greyhounds for the destruction of game without having a licence (65, 70, 211, 275, 295, 323, 324, 354) with orders to the constables to break the guns and hang the dogs (146); and lastly that printing presses had been set up in Appleby with type for printing (70).