The total area of the Union, including the dock, rivers, and roads, is about 8600 acres.

+ St. Matthew's return in 1851 included 90 persons in the Barracks. St. Peter's return included 191 in the Union Workhouse in 1841, and 297 in 1851. St. Margaret's return in 1851 included 207 in the County Gaol, and 41 in East Suffolk Hospital.

St. Clement's parish includes Fore Hamlet, Back Hamlet, and Wykes Bishop Hamlet, now connected parts of the town.

§ St. George's street was returned as Globe lane in 1841; but only three houses in it are extra-parochial, the rest being in St. Matthew's and St. Margaret's parishes.

Westerfield and Whitton-cum-Thurlston parishes are two miles north of the town, but are mostly in the Borough, as already noticed.

BOROUGH WARDS.-The First, or St. Clement's Ward, comprises St. Clement's parish and that part of Rushmere within the borough. The Second, or St. Mar. garet's Ward, comprises St. Margaret's parish, Cold Dunghills, Globe lane, or St. George's street, and the borough part of Westerfield parish. The Third, or Middle Ward, includes the parishes of St. Mary at Elms, St. Lawrence, St. Stephen, St. Mary at Quay, and St. Helen; and also Felaw's Houses and Shirehall yard. The Fourth, or Bridge Ward, comprises the parishes of St. Nicholas, St. Peter, and St. Mary Stoke. The Fifth, or Westgate Ward, includes the parishes of St. Mary at Tower and St. Matthew, and also the borough por tions of the parishes of Whitton-cum-Thurlston, Bramford, and Sproughton.

The great increase of population in the borough of Ipswich during the ten years from 1841 to 1851 is attributed to the facilities afforded to commerce by the formation of the extensive wet dock; by the steam communication opened on the river Orwell, and by the completion of railways-advantages which have been readily turned to account by the enterprising inhabitants. The number of dwelling-houses, warehouses, granaries, factories, &c., has rapidly encreased during the last few years in and around the town. In the parishes of St. Mat thew, St. Margaret, St. Mary Stoke, St. Clement, and St. Peter within the last 12 years upwards of 1800 houses have been built, and the total population of the borough is now about 35,000 souls. The rateable annual value of the borough in 1815 was only £42,512, but in 1847 it amounted to £81,823, and in 1853 to £87,552, which is about 20 per cent less than the real annual value.

IPSWICH UNION, and Superintendent Registrar's District, comprises all the parishes, &c., enumerated in the table at page 52, and as there arranged they are divided for the registration of Births and Deaths into St. Matthew's, St. Clement's, and St Margaret's Dis tricts. The total expenditure of the fourteen parishes, &c., of the Union, for the relief of the poor, &c, during the three years preceding the formation of the Union in 1835, averaged about £16,000 per annum; but since then it has only averaged about £14,000 a year, including the officers' salaries, &c. In 1846 the total expenditure was £13,920; in 1850, £12,378; in 1852, £14,898; and in 1853, £15,025. Before the formation of the Union the fourteen parishes of Ipswich maintained their poor separately, under their own vestries and overseers, and but few of them had any accom modations for in-door poor. Though the population of the Union has encreased from about 22,000 to about 35,000 since 1835, the parochial assessments have been from £1000 to £2000 a year less than 1832, '3, and '4, which clearly shews the beneficial effects of the New Poor Law over the old parochial system, which too often generated indolence and fostered the idle and the dissolute; while the really necessitous and deserving poor were often too harshly treated. Though less money is now expended with a population one-third greater than it was in 1835, the deserving poor are now better provided for than they were before that year, owing to the searching manner into which every case is enquired into by the guardians and relieving officers; to the provision of a comfortable home for the houseless and to the judicious mode of relieving the out-door poor chiefly in bread, flour, and other necessaries, instead of entirely in money, as formerly, when a large proportion of the sums paid to the paupers was often misapplied. The number of indoor poor was 331 in 1837 ; and, 509, in 1,838 but from 1848 to 1850 they averaged 759 per annum. The number of outdoor poor was 2009 in 1837; 2178 in 1838; 2340 in 1848; 2833 in 1849; and 3531 in 1850. During the half year ending Lady-day 1851, the in-door paupers amounted to 463, and the out-door paupers to 2925. But in these figures, some of the paupers are counted twice or thrice, owing to their receiving relief only for a few weeks or months in, different parts of the year, and each of their applications being counted as a separate case; were it not so the above statement would shew that from 1848 to 1850, about one in every seven of the whole population was a pauper, whilst the reality is not more than one in ten, and in prosperous times not more than one in fifteen. Some of the 14 parishes contain a much greater number of poor in proportion to their population than others, it would therefore be much more equitable if an uniform rate was levied throughout the whole Union, instead of the present unequal parochial assessments. The parishes of St. Lawrence, St. Stephen, and St. Mary le Tower, consist almost entirely of good houses and shops, and have scarcely any poor resident or belonging to them. The UNION WORKHOUSE is in Wherstead road, near Stoke, but in St. Peter's parish. It was built in 1836-7 at the cost of about £6000, on about two acres of land, which cost £535.

A

It is a large red brick building, divided into four wards, with the governor's house in the centre. It has room for about 400 inmates, but has seldom more than 300. The Board of Guardians meet every Saturday. Three guardians each are elected yearly for St. Clement's and St. Margaret's parishes; two each for St. Matthew's and St. Peter's parishes, and one for each of the other ten parishes. Wm. Hy. Alexander, Esq., is the chairman, and the Rev. Charles Drage, vice-chairman. John E. Sparrowe, Esq., is union clerk and superintendent registrar; Mr. Thomas Kemp, deputy superintendent registrar; Mr. J. O. Francis, (surgeon,) registrar of marriages; Rev. C. Paglar, B.D., chaplain; Mr. Robert and Mrs. Clamp, master and matron of the workhouse; John Smith and Sus. Scotchmer, schoolmaster and mistress: and Abm. Richardson, porter. Messrs. W. Elliston, G. G. Sampson, G. C. Edwards, and Wm. Aldams are the union surgeons. The RELIEVING OFFICERS are Messrs. S. R. Gooding for St. Clement's District; Wm. Manning, for St. Margaret's District; and Henry Fisk for St. Matthew's District. The Registrars of Births and Deaths are Henry Watson for St. Matthew's District; S. R. Gooding for St. Clement's District; and William Hutchinson for St. Margaret's District. The Collectors of Poor Rates are Wm. Catchpole for St. Clement's District; Wm. Hutchinson for St. Margaret's District; and Henry Watson for St. Matthew's District.

ANCIENT HISTORY.-As already noticed, Ipswich derives its name from its situation at the point where the river Gipping discharges itself into the Orwell. It is variously written in Domesday Book Gyppeswik, Gyppeswiz, Gyppewicus, and Gyppewic, which mode of spelling was gradually changed into Yppyswyche and Ipswich. It was of small extent in the Saxon era, and was encompassed by a rampart or wall, which was defended on the outside by a ditch, and was broken down by the Danes when they pillaged the town, in the years 991 and 1000. This fortification was afterwards renewed and repaired in the fifth of King John. A castle is said to have been erected here by William the Conqueror, and to have been destroyed in the reign of Henry II. In the rampart or wall which encompassed the town, were four gates, called from their situation after the four cardinal points of the compass; and we also read of a fifth, called Losegate, which stood on the bank of the Orwell, at the spot where there once was a ford. All vestiges of the wall, gates, and castle disappeared many years ago; but there are still some traces of the ditch and the earthen rampart on which the wall stood, from which it appears that the parishes of St. Clement, St. Helen, and St. Mary Stoke, with part of those of St. Margaret and St. Matthew, were not included within the gates, and are accordingly, in old writings, denominated the suburbs of Ipswich. The castle was perhaps merely a bastion tower, which stood in the place still called the Tower Ditches. As early as A.D. 964, money was coined here, and specimens are extant of coins struck at a mint here, from that period to the reign of Henry III. Being remotely situated from the great lines of communication through the kingdom, Ipswich did not suffer much from the intestine wars which so frequently ravaged England

from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. The town, in conjunc tion with the neighbouring country, espoused the cause of the sons of Henry II.; and during the contest between these rebels and their Royal father, a large army of Flemings, in 1173, headed by Robert de Bellomont, Earl of Leicester, sailed up the Orwell, and landed at this port, whence they passed to Framlingham castle, the stronghold of Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, who had joined the rebel princes. The feeble garrison of Ipswich vainly opposed the entrance of the Flemings, who demolished the fortifications. They afterwards attacked the castle of Haughley, near Stowmarket, then commanded by Ralph Broc, for the king, and razed it to the earth. Flushed with victory, they passed westward to Fornham St. Genevieve, where they were completely routed by the king's forces, under Henry de Bohun, and ten thousand of them slain. This battle completely destroyed the hopes of the rebels, and it has been conjectured that some of the Flemings, spared from the wreck of Leicester's army, purchased their lives and subsistence by locating in this part of the kingdom, and instructing the inhabitants in the manufacture of jersey, or worsted stuffs, which had been introduced into Norwich, by some of their countrymen, in the preceding reign.

Before, and for many years after the Norman Conquest, Ipswich was in the same condition as all other boroughs that were in the demesne of the crown. For some time anterior to the Domesday survey, it appears to have been rapidly declining. "In the time of King Edward," (the Confessor,) says that document, "there were 538 burgesses who paid custom to the king, and they had forty acres of land. But now there are 110 burgesses who pay custom, and 100 poor burgesses who can pay no more than one penny a head to the king's geld. Thus, upon the whole, they have forty acres of land, and 328 houses now empty, and which, in the time of King Edward, scotted to the king's geld. Roger, the vice-earl, let the whole for £40; afterwards he could not have that rent, and abated about sixty shillings of it, so that it now pays £37, and the earl always hath the third part." We are also informed by the same ancient record, that during the reign of Edward the Confessor, his queen Edith, the daughter of Earl Godwin, had two-thirds of this borough, and Earl Guert, the sixth son of the same nobleman, possessed the remaining third. The queen had a grange, to which belonged four carucates of land, and the earl another, valued at one hundred shillings, be sides the third penny of the borough. In the reign of Richard I., the inhabitants had so much increased in numbers and wealth, that they purchased their freedom from that monarch. The first charter obtained by the town, was granted by King John, in 1190, and conferred on the inhabitants important privileges, some of which strikingly illustrate the oppressions under which the mass of the people must, in those early ages have groaned. By this charter the king granted to the burgesses, the borough of Ipswich, with all its appurtenances, liberties, &c., to be held of him and his heirs, by the payment of the usual annual farm of £35, and one hundred shillings more at the exchequer. He exempted them from the payment of all taxes, under the denominations of tholl, lestage, stallage, passage,

pontage, and all other customs throughout his land and sea-ports. The other privileges granted to the people of Ipswich by this charter were as follows:-That they should have a merchants' guild and hanse of their own; that no person should be quartered upon them without their consent, or take anything from them by force; that they might hold their lands, and recover their just dues, from whomsoever they were owing; that none of them should be fined or amerced but according to the laws of the free borough; and that they might choose two bailiffs and four coroners out of the principal men of the town. As early as 1254, a court of pleas was established here for the trial of disputed debts, without the king's writ.

Ipswich was not the theatre of any of the violent commotions which arose from the quarrels between King John and his barons; but it passively contributed about £300 to the tax or " quinzieme,” which be levied in the seventh year of his reign. In 1215, the duty levied on woad, (used in dyeing,) amounted in Suffolk, to £50; Yorkshire to £96; Lincolnshire, to £47; and Southamptonshire, to £79 thus it appears that Ipswich then enjoyed a considerable share of the woollen manufacture, which was introduced by the Flemings, and fostered by royal charters, and the monasteries founded in the town and neighbourhood.

Edward I., in 1285, for some offence committed by the burgesses, seized the borough into his own hands, and kept it till 1291, when, being pleased with the service performed by some ships from Ipswich, in his expedition against Scotland, he re-granted the borough and its liberties to the burgesses, and confirmed the charters of his predeces. sors, John and Henry III.; but he advanced the fee farm rent from £40 to £60 per annum. In 1317, Edward II. granted a charter, confirming the former privileges of the borough, but reducing the number of coroners from four to two. The oppressive levies made by Edward II. to assist him in his wars against Scotland, and in the defence of his favourites, the De Spencers, caused much dissension in the kingdom; and, in 1324, a great riot broke out in Ipswich, headed by the representatives of the borough, and many of the principal inhabitants. In 1328, a powerful fleet was collected on the coast of Suffolk, to assist Edward III. in his designs upon France, for which kingdom Sir John Howard embarked 500 men, at Ipswich, in 1337. Edward III. being on a visit at Walton, in 1339, confirmed the charters of Ipswich, and granted further immunities; but, in 1345, he for some time disfranchised the borough, on account of an insult received here, at the assizes, by a judge named Sharford, from some sailors, who thinking his lordship staid too long at dinner, one of them, in a frolic, took his seat upon the bench, and caused another to make proclamation, requiring William Sharford to come into court and save his fine; and as he did not appear, ordered him to be fined. The judge, who was a morose man, so highly resented this joke, that because the magistrates refused to apprehend the sailors, he prevailed upon the king to seize the borough, and to place it under the government of the sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk; but, before the end of the year, it was again under the control of the bailiffs.