Chapter 14

Life in the early town

Life in the simple dwellings in the shadow of the castle was geared to the land and must have often been hard, depending greatly on the demands of the lord of the manor and on the vagaries of the weather. Even as early as the 13th century compulsory service was being changed to paid work in some parts of the country, the latter being more satisfactory than work done grudgingly under compulsion, but it is unlikely that any change came to Cockermouth until much later.

Customary tenants were hard hit by the death of either lord or tenant On the death of a tenant the lord was entitled to take the family’s best beast He was also entitled to the ‘heriot’, a ‘fine’ enabling the heir to assume the tenancy, usually the payment of an extra year’s rent. A similar payment had to be made by tenants on the death of the lord, often bearing no relationship to the annual rent. In 1826 Nathaniel Nicholson, agent to George O’Brien, Earl of Egremont, notified Joseph Smith that, at the Court of Dimissions, he had

• “assessed upon you as only Son and Heir of Richard Smith Hatter deceased a Descent Fine ofTen Pounds for and in Respect of a Parcel of Land called the Garth with a small Cottage Barn and Smith’s Shop lately built thereon of the Rent of three Pence”. [I]

On 27th December 1836 the earl’s steward informed Thomas Mackreth that he had been assessed

• “as only Son and Heir at Law of John Mackreth deceased a Descent Fine of £24-7s-0d for and in respect of a Parcel of a Messuage and Garden in Kirkgate of the Rent of 2d…. now consisting of one Dwelling House in Front of the Square and three Cottages adjoining and behind the same …. And I do hereby give you further Notice that a Descent Fine of £20 due to the said Earl upon the admittance of the said John Mackreth to the said premises upon the death of Margaret the Wife of Thomas Mackreth to whom he was Heir at Law is also still in arrear and unpaid.” [2]

These two fines date from as recently as the 19th century.

A further example of the lord’s control over life was the ‘merchet’, a fine payable to him for a marriage.

After the Black Death in l348/9 labour was in demand and peasants realised their worth, but authority clamped down on them and for the next 200 years wages, work and clothes were strictly controlled by a succession of laws. Edward Ill, having freed the serfs for the advantage of the nobility, ordered a national scale of wage rates- master carpenters, thatchers, plasterers and waIlers each 3d. a day, freemasons 4d. a day and all labourers 1½ d. a day. A mower was to receive 5d. for an acre of meadow. Idleness was punishable by a temporary return to slavery, by branding and perpetual slavery for a second offence and by the halter for further offences. No wages were to be paid for festival days. To prevent movement of labour, payment was made yearly, later half-yearly in Cockermouth. Hours of work were dawn to dusk from September to March and from before 5 a.m. to after 7 p.m. in the summer, with an hour to eat, except that in the months of June and July, when days were long, 30 minutes was allowed for breakfast and 90 minutes at midday, so that a rest could be taken. [3]

Clothing was controlled to denote class and, later, to help the woollen industry. Servants, carters, ploughmen, etc., were to wear cloth costing Is [5p] or less per yard, while yeomen, tradesmen and artificers, the middle class, could go up to Is-6d. The kerchiefs of wives and maidens might not be more than 12d. [5p] in value. [4] Even the length was regulated – jackets, coats and gowns might only just cover the buttocks in the lower classes, while on craftsmen and merchants they could reach to the knee. Lords, churchmen and graduates might wear them as long as they wished, and actors were exempt from control.[5]

Gradually people in and around Cockermouth became grouped into three classes – the yeomen, who might be middle class countrymen, small farmers or servants and retainers working for the upper classes; farm labourers without any land of their own, working on others’ farms; or town workers, earning a living either in domestic industry or in the small workshops which developed. The town dweller might still have his bit of land or keep a cow on the common, but there was a tendency for him to rely more and more on the wage he was paid for his work.

Until arable and stock farming learned new methods in the 18th and 19th centuries the majority of people lived very near starvation level. Vegetables such as peas and beans and coarse barley, rye and oats, with home-brewed ale, were the chief items of food, with very occasionally cheese and meat, usually pork.

Labouring people ate rye bread and oaten bread in large thin cakes baked on iron plates called “girgles”. The few 18th century visitors to the Lake District complained about the blackness and coarseness of the bread, although there were some favourable comments on ‘oat clap bread’.[6] Every source of food had to be used, as shown by a Court Leet ruling of 1640

• ‘That none of the inhabitants or dwellers in Cockermouth shall suffer anie of theire children or servants to gather anie heads amongst anie man’s stooks till such time as the corn be housed upon pain 6s-8d.”[7]

Fruit and eggs were sold to the upper classes and according to a manuscript of 1460 even they might eat meat only once a week – beef, mutton or pork. The cattle put on the harvested fields or the common pasture were small and thin, most being slaughtered at Martinmas and salted for winter use.

The poverty of the county is reflected in the tax returns. In 1693 a national tax of 4d. in the pound brought payments averaging 7s-2’i4d. from England and Wales as a whole. Bedfordshire paid the highest, with 11s Y2d., while at the other end of the scale Cumberland paid only 11.375d [4.7p]. Even Westmorland paid over 2s. [8]

Men of all classes poached, not only the workers for whom it was an essential part of family maintenance, but the gentry and clergy. Carrying nets at night to catch a hare or rabbit for the poacher’s hungry family carried a penalty of transportation and only in the latter part of the 19th century did a more humane attitude develop. [9]

The cost of living in 1700 was four times that in 1600. Wages at this time are recorded in the day books of Humphrey Senhouse when managing his aunt’s estates at Millom Castle. In 1700 and the years immediately following a man earned 4d. a day for haymaking or digging peat in summer, 3d. a day in winter for hedging, manuring and threshing. Making a new hedge could earn 6d. a day, mowing hay and shearing corn 6d. a day for men and 4d. for women. A boy driving a plough was paid 1 d. a day. Masons, carpenters, etc., earned 8d. and a carter using his own horse and cart could claim up to Is. a day. Men living in on a farm were paid £2 to £4 a year, a cook £1-15s. [10]

There was an appreciable change in money values and consequently in wages during the 18th century. A government enquiry into agricultural wages was made in 1790 and again in 1804, the later figures being roughly 50% greater than the earlier in Cockermouth. [11]

The returns for the town in 1790 were:

Day labourer in winter 1s-6d., in summer1s-8d., in harvest 2s

Threshing wheat per quarter 1s-8d. and barley per 1s-3d.

Reaping wheat per acre 7s.

Mowing barley per acre 5s.

Blacksmith’s work – wheel tire 8d., plough work and chains 4 ½ d. and shoeing 1s-8d.

Carpenter, mason and thatcher by the day, each 2s.

Collar maker’s work 2s-8d.

Poor rates and other town charges in the pound 1s. (Up to 3s-8d. in 1804.)

About the same time (1811) the Earl, George Q’Brien, paid 3s-6d. a day to a journeyman carpenter and 2s. a day to his apprentice for work at the castle. [12]

This was a particularly hard time because of the war with France, reflected in the almost fourfold increase in the poor rate shown above in a period of 14 years. In 1813 over £7 million was spent on poor relief in England, compared with a total of £1Y2 million from local taxes for all other purposes. Wheat, 43s. [£2.15] a quarter in 1792, had trebled to 126s [£6.30] some 20 years later. [13]

Then the war ended and was followed in 1816 by a particularly bad year. Corn prices collapsed and thousands of farmers were ruined, as we have noted. Handloom weavers were hard hit by the new machinery and by 1818 were more likely to earn 8s. a week than the 23s. of a few years before. To add to suffering the winter of 1816 was unusually bitter. The corn laws did not solve the problems of the next 30 years. Bad harvests, industrial booms and collapses, made conditions in the country as a whole very bad. In the early 1840s the agricultural wage was about 1Os. a week and a skilled worker in the town could earn only some 18s. Then trade improved. British exports in 1872 were four times as great as in 1850. Food prices rose by 60% in the same period, but wages rose considerably more. [14] The standard of living improved. But while industry thrived farming entered a decline which was to last until 1914, a decline sparked off by a series of bad harvests in the late 1870s aided by foreign grain imports. While Cockermouth prospered as an industrial town, it continued its role of market town to an agricultural community which was less happily placed.

To return to the earlier period, the enclosure acts provided a certain amount of work at a time when it was greatly needed. The new fields required labour, including women for weeding, and men were required for the actual process of enclosure-draining land, hedging new fields and making roads. The number of men without work may indeed have been a stimulus to enclosure. At a vestry meeting in Cockermouth in 1817

• “It was Resolved that the Overseers and Surveyors should have power to undertake the making of the New Roads and Footpaths, and to treat with the Commissioners appointed by the Inclosure Act for carrying the work into execution without delay. And that they employ such of the persons as are now receiving relief from the Town to work upon the said roads and footpaths as they may think proper and necessary.” [15]

Relationships between employer and employed have been comparatively good in Cockermouth. The widespread outbreaks of violence in the 14th century did not affect Cumberland. One factor in a better feeling between the upper and lower classes was the ever-present threat from the north. [16]

With the disappearance of servile labour (which persisted much longer on the continent) necessary communal tasks might be undertaken with a certain dignity. Of the latter part of the 14th century Trevelyan said.

• “For purposes of war and police, and for town-works of all sorts like digging a town ditch or drain, repairing the town bridge, helping in the harvest in the town fields, very occasionally cleaning or mending the street in front of his own house, a man might be called upon for personal service by the civic authorities. Such work in the common cause was not regarded as ‘servile’, like work on the lord’s demesne.” [17]

Dignity came too in each man having a share in the affairs of the town. The lord of the manor was still chairman and a great influence in the manor-court or leet-court, but in such an open court each man might take a part, as he did in regulating use of the common fields. However poor the townsman might be, there were matters in which he had the right to make his voice heard.

Work in field, home or workshop was hard and long. Workers and their families (of whom all but the very youngest were workers too) must have looked forward to Sundays and the holidays of saints’ days, when rest was enforced under penalty of fines by church courts -a beneficial ruling. The church and other groups organised festivities, either outdoors or in the nave of the church. [18] During the 15th century there began ‘church ales’ arranged by the clergy to raise funds for the church fabric or some other good cause, when ale was sold and drunk in the churchyard or in the church itself. We can see here the beginning of the church tea or bazaar.

Long hours, hard work, often no food to spare but over all a sense of community in a small town which still had not reached 3,000 people by 1800.