DIARY OF MISTRESS JOYCE JEFFRIES.
There is also a Manuscript Diary of Miss Joyce Jeffries in the possession of Sir T. Winnington. The diary contains an account of the state of domestic life among the upper classes, during the reign of Charles I, in the counties of Worcester and Hereford, and relates to Ham Castle, in the parish of Clifton-on-Teme, where this lady resided, and the siege of the city of Hereford, where she also possessed a residence, during the calamities of civil war. It is hoped that the Manuscript will be published, and no one can be found more able for the task of editor than the Rev. J. Webb, of Tretire, near Ross, who has already published a most valuable work, of local as well as general interest, on the Household Roll of Bishop Swinfield of Hereford, of which I have given an abstract further on.
Mistress Joyce Jeffries was the half-sister of Humphrey Coningsby, Esq., of Neen Sollers, a gentleman remarkable for his chivalrous enterprise as a traveller in the reign of James I. This autograph account book embraces a period of nine years, and embodies many curious particulars bearing upon the events, persons, and manners of the age, also setting forth the writer as the representative of a class now only to be seen in family pictures of the time. She lived unmarried, had an income of more than £500 per annum, in the expenditure of which she was very generous. Her dress was costly; she employed false curls and curling irons, wore many rings, used spectacles, and carried a whistle suspended at her girdle by a yard of loop black lace—probably for a little dog. A Cypress cat was given her by the Lady Dansey of Brinsop, and she kept a throstle in a twiggen cage. She had many god-children, to one of whom (Mistress Eliza Acton) she gave £800 as a marriage portion. Madam Jeffries kept several servants, and went abroad in a coach drawn by two mares. She was very observant of the festivals and ceremonies of the church, and contributed to the wassell of the hinds when they lighted their twelve fires, and made the fields resound with their revelry; and on Valentine's Day gave Tom Aston, Dick Gravell, or any other male, a present in money for coming to be her Valentine. She sent the mayor a present of ten shillings on his law-day, and on one occasion dined with him, when the waits were in attendance, to whom she gave money; and she was generous to travelling minstrels and showmen, as "to a boy that did sing like a blackbird," "to Cherlickcombe and his jackanapes," and "to a man that had the dancing horse at the Hereford Midsummer fair." As to what befell her in the troubled time of the Civil War, the book passes from the year 1638 to the end of 1647, during which England toiled and suffered under intestine strife. No county was more loyal to the royal cause than that of Hereford. In 1638, Mrs. Jeffries pays ship-money and another impost called "the king's provision," and finds a soldier for her property in Hereford and elsewhere. In 1641 she purchases pamphlets and news-books and takes an interest in passing political events. In September, 1642, when the Earl of Essex entered Worcester, and sent the Earl of Stamford to occupy Hereford, she quitted her town house and went to Garnons, the residence of Mr. Geers, a few miles distant, thinking she would be there in security; but in the plundering which took place by the Earl of Stamford's soldiers, immediately upon their arrival, the house of Mr. Geers was visited and pilfered by Captain Hammond, who carried off much goods, including her two bay coach mares. At the same time she had other property secreted and saved in other places. The Parliamentarians having left the city in December, it was reoccupied by the Royalists, and her friend and cousin, Fitzwilliam Coningsby, was made Governor; when, besides her regular assessment, she sent him a present of £50 to pay his soldiers, and a bullock worth £6. In the spring of 1643 he marched with the rest of the commissioners of the county and the Herefordshire levies to join the little army of Lord Herbert of Raglan, at Highnam near Gloucester, where they were all captured by Sir William Waller. Hereford continued unmolested till the month of April, and Mistress Jeffries returned for a few days to her house, but the report of the Parliamentarians coming once more to assail the city under the command of that general drove her once more to her retreat. Her house at Widemarsh Gate suffered during his attack on the city, but she remained in quiet at Garnons until April, 1644. As the county was now seriously disturbed by the contending parties she suddenly took flight again, visiting Hereford for the last time, and carrying off her trunks and chests and servants to Ham Castle, the seat of her cousin Jeffries, on the banks of the Teme, on the edge of the county of Worcester. Soldiers were still quartered in her house at Hereford, and she pays for work done in making bulwarks to defend the city. At length, in 1645, when the whole of the suburbs were laid bare up to the walls by order of the governor, Colonel Barnabas Scudamore, her new house and several others her property without Widemarsh Gate were pulled down. She takes this as a matter of course, without comment upon the hardship of the proceeding, and upon all occasions shows a cheerful and contented mind. In many other respects she felt the effects of the war, and symptoms of them frequently appear in her accounts. She contributed to the lecturers introduced into the churches; her cousin's child was "baptised after the new directory;" and the committee men laid their hands on her property and straitened her means, though she still persevered in the unwearied exercise of humanity and in bestowing her charity on others. As she advances in years her accounts exhibit a trait or two of her approaching infirmities: she loses various small articles of value—spectacles and rings, which her servants find and bring to her, and are rewarded accordingly; and the recurrence of this excites some suspicion of their knavery. The death of her cousin Herbert Jeffries, at Ham Castle, in consequence of his breaking his leg, disturbed her tranquillity, and is described with melancholy minuteness. Age seems to have neither abated her generous feeling nor the ardour of her domestic affections. She was always interested in those events which usually bring joy to families and occasional entries in our parochial registers. The union of Miss Acton, her goddaughter, with Mr. Francis Geers, and a christening that took place at Ham Castle a very short time before her death (the child receiving her own Christian name), was to her a source of infinite pleasure. She went on, "giving" to some and "forgiving" others, to the close of her beneficent career. She died in April, 1648, and was buried in the chancel of the parish church of Clifton-on-Teme, where her memory is still revered by those to whom her existence and character are known.
THE TOWNSEND MANUSCRIPTS.
One of the Townsend Manuscripts is in the possession of Mr. G. E. Roberts, of Kidderminster. It is an interleaved copy of "The Compleat Justice. London, 1661," in octavo; and consists of 420 pages letterpress, and 470 in manuscript. It is well bound in calf, with initials of the Knight ("H. T.") impressed on sides, and autograph on fly-leaf. Sir Henry's aim may have been to render it a book of legal reference, as upon one of the first leaves he gives a key to a great part of the Manuscript in a list of authorities quoted. But amongst them exists much matter of a more interesting nature. The following list of the more valuable mems. will afford an idea of their character.
"1. Orders at Quarter Sessions for the raising of monies for the repair of Worcester after the battle, 13th Jan., 1651.
"2. Sundry criminal cases tried at Sessions, between 1651 and 1662.
"3. Laws respecting 'Alehowses consented to, vpon presentmt of ye Grand Jury,' within the county, 1660.
"4. Limitation of 'Alehowses' within the county, 1649; with lists of 'ye certeyn number allowed.'