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TITHES OF WOOL & LAMBS, 1763


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The following notes are based on depositions made for a Court of Exchequer case concerning Eskdale, Miterdale, Wasdale and Wasdalehead tithes in 1763, before Andrew Hudleston Esq., Daniel Robinson & Henry Littledale, gents. (Carlisle Record Office D/Hud/8/38 - depositions dated 8 April 1763, made under a court order dated 26 Feb 1763). The plaintiff was George Edward Stanley, owner of the tithes (an infant, for whom Mildred Stanley, widow, his mother, stood as guardian and next friend); the defendants were Eskdale & Wasdale farmers Joseph Sharp, William Russell, William Tyson, William Nicholson, Thomas Tyson, John Wasdale etc.

Eskdale and Wasdale were chapelries within the huge parish of St. Bees, formerly run from the great monastery there. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII, the rights to tithes which had formerly supported the monastery rather than the local priests could be acquired by anybody with cash to spare, which in the case of these chapelries meant the Stanley family. In the 18th century, the tithes payable to the Stanleys each year by sheep farmers in the Eskdale / Wasdale chapelries were as follows:

  1. Tithe of lambs: one in ten of the lambs dropped that spring which survived to St. Peter's day (29 June). In practice, as the heafs around Eskdale and Wasdale were rarely less than a couple of miles from the farmsteads, it would be madness to drive the lambs all the way down to the valley when they were so young, so a "modus" payment of 2 shillings was made in place of each nominally-titheable lamb. As some small stock-holders had fewer than ten lambs in a year, there was a sliding scale:
    • Half a penny per lamb if there were four lambs or fewer
    • One shilling (=12 pence) for five lambs
    • One shilling and ten pence for 6 lambs, plus half a penny more for each extra lamb up to nine.
    Though the lambs were counted on or about 29 June, the payment was deferred until Michaelmas (29 September).

  2. Tithe of wool: The sheep were sheared around midsummer, and the tithe collected in the week following St. Peter's Day (usually about the Monday in Wasdale Head; Tuesday in Eskdale). To make sure that farmers did not send simply dump the wool from their oldest sheep as a tithe payment, this was divided into two categories-
    1. Tithe of hogg wool- one tenth of the wool from sheep which had been born in the spring of the previous year.
    2. Tithe of elder sheep.
    In theory, the wool tithes could also be converted to money payments, but in Eskdale and Wasdale this rarely happened.
The dispute concerned the relationship between the tithe of lambs and the tithe of hogg wool, and was the sequel to an earlier case involving the late Margaret Sharpe, mother of current defendant Joseph. Mrs Sharpe's reasoning seems to have been that if the tithe of lambs were paid in kind by giving one lamb in ten to the tithe owner, then the tithe owner would automatically be getting one tenth of the hogg wool when those same lambs were a year older, and that the two-shilling modus payment had been calculated to take account of this, so no separate tithe of hogg wool was payable. The catch was that in living memory nobody else had seen the situation in that way.

JOHN VICCARS, TITHE FARMER

The primary function of the witnesses for the plaintiff in 1763 was to confirm that Mrs Sharpe's interpretation was not based on reality, and the most important of these witnesses was probably John Viccars, yeoman. Born in Eskdale over 65 years ago, he had lived there most of his life. His father, John Viccars, and his grandfather, John Viccars, had in their time kept about 7-800 sheep; he had increased the flock to around 1000. Because the purpose of the 1763 case was to establish a legal principle, he was technically one of the defendants, and also made a deposition as a defence witness. He had been well acquainted with most of the other defendants for 30 years or more, but had not seen young master Stanley since the lad was about 2 years old.
The tithe system had been explained to Mr Viccars in childhood by his grandfather (who had died half a century ago, aged about 73) in the terms I have set out above- a modus payment for tithe of lambs, plus separate tithes of hogg wool and the wool of older sheep. Most significantly, he had himself been a tithe collector, as he explained in detail with the help of the official record books provided as evidence by Mrs Stanley. There were three of these, marked A B & C, and John was able to link the handwriting in different sections to specific individuals, going back to his childhood, thereby confirming that, so far as it was possible to ascertain, they contained "regular & true Entries of all the Transactions in relation to the payment of Tythe Wool & Lamb within the said sevll. Townsps." (they actually went back long before his own time, to 1634).
Entries before 1715 (going back to 1678) featured the handwriting of Edward Stanley Esq., the plaintiff's great grandfather. John did not recognise the handwriting from 1715 to 1720, but was able to explain the situation after that date: Unfortunately, John did not bring his own record book to the hearing, with full details of the quantities of wool collected from the hoggs and the older sheep, and the number of lambs each year. What he could say from memory was that when he had been out collecting with Mr Shutt [??- badly written] and Mr Knott in 1757 several stockholders refused to pay tithe of hoggs' wool, which they claimed was "not due", and this continued the following year, with 30 or more refusals. They did offer a tithe of the wool of older sheep, but "his Orders were from his employer to take the whole Wool or none". On the other hand, the defendants also offered to pay the tithe of lambs either by the two-shilling "modus" or in kind- this to cover, in their view, both the lamb tithe and the hogg wool tithe. The Stanleys insisted that the hogg wool tithe was due, however the lamb tithe was paid.

THE PRICE OF A LAMB?

One obvious factor to consider was the actual sale value of a lamb in its first summer. Because, due to the remoteness of the heafs, such sales rarely if ever arose in the dispute area, it was almost impossible for the local stockholders to answer this question. John Viccars could not make "any certain judgment", but could only observe that "he wd. not take Two Shills. a peice for his own Lambs at that Time of the Year". Another witness for both sides, John Wilkinson, made a rough estimate of 1s 6d, on the basis that on one occasion, when prices were low, he had sold "a score of his worst kind of Lambs" at Michaelmas for just nine pence each. To gain some sort of balance, witnesses from other communities were called to give evidence on prices. Most of these also lived or farmed within St. Bees parish, so were able to testify on other questions as well.

John Fisher, gentleman of Loweswater, aged 51, had known the area and its sheep stock for some 29 years, and for 10 years or more had leased the tithes in that chapelry- it was his father, also John Fisher, who had been part of the 1729 Eskdale area contract (he had died about a decade ago, aged over 75). He reckoned lambs in the Loweswater area were worth on average three shillings apiece by June 29, and the Eskdale area sheep were "full as good or better sort of Sheep & are heafed & depastured upon as good Grounds & Comons as those of Loweswater". He also confirmed that when his father had jointly held the Eskdale tithe rights, numerous stockholders had made compound payments to cover all their lamb and wool tithes- he had worked as a collector himself one year.

William Haile, yeoman of Uldale (in Haile parish) had for 24 years owned an estate at Kinniside (in St. Bees parish, with common rights along the Wasdale border), and for three years, about 30 years ago, he had been involved in renting a farm at Wasdale Head, with 440 sheep, off Henry Tyson, brother of present defendant William Tyson. That had been when the tithes were farmed out to Fisher and Wilkinson; Henry Tyson had made a compound payment, and his tenants had followed this practice.
Although he had no personal experience of the situation in Eskdale, William remembered meeting at clipping time men such as Henry Vicars (who died about 20 years ago, aged around 80), Robert Hunter (who died about 11 years ago, aged over 70) and John Tyson (father of defendant John Tyson, who died about 8 years ago, aged nearly 80) who had confirmed at least the basic arrangements for tithe collection. He also testified that for some three years around 1715 he had been servant to the late Anthony Patrickson, gent., who had owned the tithes of Ennerdale ("Innerdale") and Kinniside. He had assisted in tithe collection, and the same payments of a two-shilling modus for lambs plus separate hog wool and older wool tithes in kind were in force there. For seven years from about fourteen years ago, he had also rented the pinnage of Innerdale and Kinniside (the right to confine strange sheep, horses & cattle found on the common in a "pinfold" enclosure and charge for their release- an early equivalent to the modern practice of letting private firms tow away and impound cars parked in the wrong place).
From all this experience, he estimated the average value of lambs in that area at their first St. Peter's day to be about 2s 2d to 2s 4d, while Eskdale and Wasdale area sheep "are generally so esteemed of a better & more valuable kind than those bred in Innerdale & Kinniside and are better depastured the Commons belonging the same being less disturbed by the Cattle of Strangers". Indeed, he and others frequently bought rams from Eskdale and Wasdale stockholders "in order to improve the Breed of sheep in Innerdale & Kinniside". He confirmed the problem of bringing lambs down from the heafs at such a young age, adding that the sheep of those townships "are generally depastured upon the Wastes Mountains or Commons belonging or adjoining to the same for the greatest part of the year but sometimes in stormy weather the weaker sheep are driven down into Inclosures near to the said Commons Wastes or Mountains in order to shelter them from the severity of the Storm."

More from this case to follow- sooner or later.