Shropshire.
An old custom, called the “Boy’s Bailiff,” formerly prevailed at Wenlock, in Whitsun week. It consisted of a man who wore a hair-cloth gown, and was called the bailiff, a recorder, justices, and other municipal officers. There were a large retinue of men and boys mounted on horseback, begirt with wooden swords, which they carried on their right sides, so that they were obliged to draw their swords out with their left hands. They used to call at the gentlemen’s houses in the franchise, where they were regaled with refreshment; and they afterwards assembled at the Guildhall, where the town clerk read some sort of rigmarole which they called their charter, one part of which was—
“We go from Bickbury, and Badger, to Stoke on the Clee,
To Monkhopton, Round Acton, and so return we.”
The first three named places are the extreme points of the franchise, and the other two are on the return to Much Wenlock. This custom is supposed to have originated in going a bannering.—Brand, Pop. Antiq., 1849, vol. i. p. 284.