LIST OF PERSONS TAKING THE OATHS TO THEIR MAJESTIES WILLIAM LIST OF PERSONS TAKING OATHS TO QUEEN ANNE . INTRODUCTION AMONG the many things in the present volume of "North Riding Records" inviting, or perhaps calling for, comment, one seems to stand forward with something like a superior claim. What I refer to is the incorporation in the contents of the volume of two or three contemporary records of a formal partition and subsequent inclosure of certain areas of land which previously had been open, undivided, and common. And the claim to notice put forward by such matters depends upon the fact that, practically, these transactions have already become things that are forgotten, and indeed things that have left not only no trace, but, for the most part, no tradition even, that they ever have been. This may seem either to imply considerable antiquity—a space of time long enough to justify rather than only warrant oblivion-or that the transaction in question was one of little general interest, or one that affected but a few persons only, and those of small account. But the inference, in either form, would be a mistaken one: for the antiquity is not great, and the persons whose interests were affected were not a few, and, relatively to the community of which they were members, by no means insignificant. But in order to illustrate what I am advancing as clearly as I can, I advert to the fact that, to my knowledge, there have been in what was the original parish of Danby-comprising the townships of Danby and Glaisdale, and embracing an area of nearly 23,000 acres of land—first and last, no fewer than seven (and, I believe, eight) such partitions and consequent processes of inclosure; and that, with the exception of two of them, I have met with no written record to perpetuate their memory; whilst in my intimate and always inquiring intercourse with the people of the said parish, spreading itself over a period of forty-five years, I have failed to find any living memory of either of them. Of one affecting an area of close upon 200 acres of land, and the interests of nineteen Freeholders (or the genuine 'Yeomen' of the olden time), b VOL. IX. and dating within the last quarter of only last century, I have reason to think that no actual, practical recollection exists in the minds of half a dozen people in the whole district; while, as to the other, although it is barely eighty-five years old yet, I am strictly accurate in saying that, but for the written record of it which reposes in the quiet dignity of oblivion and unsmirched parchment in the Freeholders' Chest,' I have never met with even the very slightest allusion to it in the mouths of the inhabitants. And yet such things as these are by no means unimportant matters in the economic history of a parish, or the district it may form a part of. They are historical landmarks, and, still more, most opportune and singularly helpful stepping-stones across the streams of difficulty which so often bar the progress of the historical inquirer, whose object it is to get back to the veritable past of our country's economic conditions. If in this present Year of Grace, 1891, I cast a mind's-eye view (a very close as well as comprehensive one, extending to every individual field or inclosure in my own parish and in no insignificant portion of Glaisdale also), or avail myself of the 'bird's-eye view' afforded by the admirable six-inch Ordnance Survey, I contemplate a total acreage of inclosed and cultivated land such as to require no smaller figures than 11,250 to represent it. And if I endeavour to obtain an analogous and equally comprehensive view, as afforded by the Survey that was taken just over eight centuries back, what I see is a total of (according to my own view) twelve hundred acres of land inclosed and cultivated, as land was inclosed and cultivated then; or (according to the views of two of my friends who dissent from my mode of calculation) at most of two thousand two hundred and fifty acres. And even this enlarged estimate, it will be observed, leaves a balance of no less than nine thousand acres of land, now and for long not only walled or fenced in, but subjected to the processes of cultivation, to be accounted for as the resultant of subsequent partitioning and inclosing transactions transactions, moreover, spreading themselves, as is known, over widely divergent periods and their concomitant economic arrangements. It may perhaps be remarked that the parish cited is, in many particulars, an exceptional one, and that in no case can it be regarded as a typical one, or one from the economic history of which much that is of general interest or application can be learnt. But I cannot help thinking that the remark would be inapplicable in both its members. In the first place, it is scarcely so exceptional as may be by some assumed, seeing that it forms a part of a district embracing some two hundred and fifty thousand acres, all more or less of the same nature |