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minuscule inscription in one horizontal line, which reads

irbici

'or (The Cross) of Irbic."

The Plates illustrating this article are from photographs of the cast in the Cardiff Museum, taken specially by Mr. Alfred Freke, of 12, Duke Street, Cardiff. We have to thank the Museum Committee for permission. to have the photographs taken, and Mr. John Ward, F.S.A., the Curator, for superintending the operation.

The Llandough cross has been previously described and illustrated by Prof. J. O. Westwood, in his Lapidarium Wallia, but not in the Archæologia Camb rensis. This cross has been taken as a model for the memorial at Haverfordwest to the Pembrokeshire men killed in the South African war. Mr. Arthur G. Langdon, F.S.A., is the architect.

Archaeologia Cambrensis.

SIXTH SERIES.-VOL. IV, PART IV.

OCTOBER, 1904.

GLIMPSES OF ELIZABETHAN PEMBROKESHIRE.

MORE ODDS AND ENDS ABOUT HAVERFORDWEST AND OTHER PLACES.

BY THE REV. JAMES PHILLIPS.

THIS number of the Archæologia Cambrensis should have contained the third and last Paper on the "Oldest Parish Registers of Pembrokeshire." Unfortunately, the Editor's request for "copy" found me at a little distance from Haverfordwest. Now, a careful re-examination of the old manuscripts is necessary, and possibly a cautious application of "restorative fluid" to some of the faded pages, before I venture to commit my notes. to print. If therefore, I am not to disappoint our courteous Editor, I must postpone the "Parish Registers" to the January number, and send him a few extracts from my notebooks, in the hope that they will not be found uninteresting.

The Archæologia Cambrensis for 1899 contained a Paper on the "Oldest Municipal Balance Sheet. This document, consisting of two four-page sheets, is the oldest business paper (as distinguished from conveyances, leases, etc.) that I have been able to find in the lumber-room which has proved so rich in archæological treasures. There was, indeed, in one of the drawers,

6TH SER., VOL. IV.

18

66

something which served to rouse hopes that were doomed to disappointment. It was a book-cover, which bore the inscription-apparently in a later hand'Order Book of the reigne of Philip and Mary." But it was only a cover. The most careful searching of every drawer and every corner in the room failed to discover any of its vanished contents.

The lowest drawer of a large cabinet that stood in the room-the drawer which held the documents relating to the disturbances of 1572—was more than half filled with paper which some destructive agency had reduced to the consistency of sawdust. As it was in this drawer, I believe, that the empty cover was found, we have, perhaps, in this tantalising spectacle the explanation of the disappearance of the contents of the "Order Book," which might have thrown a much-needed light on the history during the four years of the Catholic reaction. Many of his co-religionists, and some who are not, but who know how to value fidelity to conscience, would have eagerly welcomed any facts about William Nichol, the one Pembrokeshire martyr of the Marian days. Save his name, and the date of his execution, and a very brief notice in Foxe, nothing is known either of his life or of his death. Yet his memory is still reverenced in the old town, and tradition has never forgotten the spot whence he ascended in his chariot of fire "the nearest way to the celestial gate.

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Many years later, when James I was king, a young Roman Catholic lady, subjected to a harassing persecution by a Puritan magistracy, showed a courage which would not have shrunk from martyrdom itself had she been called upon to face the fiery ordeal. But no one knows her name, and the only memorial of her constancy is to be found in an old manuscript at the Record Office. The town that honoured the memory of the Protestant martyr could not be expected to pay like honour to the "Popish " woman, whose parents had been in the service of the Mary Stuart whom good Pro

testants hated almost as bitterly as they hated her cousin, Mary Tudor.

It is not till about the twentieth year of Elizabeth's reign, some ten years after the date of the "Oldest Municipal Balance Sheet," that we find among the papers the annual statements in which the corporate officialsmayors, chamber-reeves, bailiffs, and sergeants-accounted for the money that had passed through their hands in their terms of office. Several of these are now lying before me. They are chiefly of one class, each being an "accompte for his office of mayoraltye," prepared by the ex-mayor himself. That is evident from the differences of form, from the varieties of handwriting, and the amusing variations of orthography. In one or two instances, the ex-chief magistrate, unless he was himself an exceptionally skilful scribe, must have employed some professional caligraphist. As a rule, they are about as difficult to decipher as the ordinary "correspondence hand" of the later Tudor period. The handwriting of the mayors is rather better than that of the bailiffs and sergeants, and that is about as much as can be said for it.

Nor is the matter, as a rule, worth the trouble of decipherment. The entries of payments are for the most such as one would expect to find in a town-clerk's petty-cash book. Yet an examination of two or three accomptes" will yield a few items worth recording.

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1. Take, for instance, the account of William Walter, mercer, the mayor for 1581, " Begynnynge with his Recepts and so followeth his payments." The former amounted to £80 19s. 1d., which might be considered an average sum if it were not for the surprising inequality of the mayor's receipts in different years, ranging from £81 in 1583 to £16 in 1591, and £3 11s. in 1593. The causes of this inequality are perhaps to be found in the very unbusinesslike arrangements for dealing with the various sources of revenue that made up the modest income of the town. Nearly all the work that would now be done by a well-paid town

clerk and a fairly-paid accountant, and a collector of rates, and rents and dues, was then performed gratuitously by the aldermen and counsellors, and by those of the business men and residents who, as a matter of civic duty, undertook the minor offices of the municipal government. The Council, it must be borne in mind, was composed of life-members. Vacancies were filled up by co-optation, and the only way to obtain a seat in the municipal senate was through these minor offices, among which was included the churchwardenship of St. Mary's.

The seventeenth-century papers show considerable improvement in the management of town affairs. The heavier burdens which the Civil War imposed upon the town, and which reached their climax in the period between the battle of Worcester and the fall of the Long Parliament, necessitated more methodical arrangements and a careful husbanding of every shilling of the municipal revenue. In the days of Queen Bess, there must have been much of the happy-go-lucky management of town affairs which was to be found in the unreformed corporations of eighty or ninety years ago. This is the kind of management which inevitably breeds dishonesty, and traces of impudent dishonesty are to be found even in these fragmentary records.

In 1581 the following were the items of receipt :

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From William Ratin and Thomas Vawer, Sergeants of Mace Thomas Vawer paid over from his church wardenship There was another 19s. 6d. due which Thomas Vawer said that Anece Gibb ought to pay, and sure enough before the end of the year Mistress Anece paid in discharge 198. of Vawer and his brother churchwarden of 1579

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