The History of Lynn, Vol. 1 [of 2]

by William Richards

31. Richard Nykke, or Nix, archdeacon of Exeter, who was elected in 1500. He must have been a man of an unamiable and hateful character. Writers unanimously concur to brand his name with the greatest obloquy. Of his vile persecuting spirit no further evidence need be adduced than the fact, that by his sanguinary judgments, Ayers, Bingy, Norrice, and the amiable Bilney were consigned to the flames, for only, in a peaceable manner, expressing those sentiments, which, as they were sanctioned by conscience, they had a right to suppose were the dictates of truth. He died January 14. 1535. In his time Chorepiscopi were first appointed by act of parliament; their office answering to that of suffragan, which, prior to that period, had been chosen at the discretion of the diocesan. While this bishop bore sway, as master and lord of Lynn, there was among the aldermen here a very remarkable person, whose name was Thomas Miller. He was mayor of the town six or seven years, but not six or seven times; for the first time he was in the office for four years successively, viz. 1520 and the three following years. He was mayor again in 1529, and again in 1546, the last of Henry VIII. That he was a man of spirit and intrepidity appears by his contending with his lord, the bishop, about the right of having the sword carried before him, which his lordship, it seems, objected to, and claimed as his own proper and exclusive right and prerogative. Our mayor and the corporation, not satisfied with this, went boldly to law with their lordly master, on the occasion, and carried their cause; which determined and established the point, and the sword has been carried before their worships, the mayors of Lynn, ever since, without any further demur or litigation. It appears indeed that it would have so happened, in no long time after, had the said law-suit, or legal decision not taken place; for the king, in the course of a few years, thought proper to require of this same bishop the relinquishment and surrender of his supremacy, or dominion over Lynn, for such valuable considerations as his majesty, in his princely wisdom, saw fit to grant or allow him, by way of exchange or remuneration. To this his lordship readily acceded; for he must have known the king too well to suppose that it would have been any way safe for him to have done otherwise. But he died soon after, and before the affair was fully concluded. The actual surrender, therefore, and probably under some new arrangements, was left to be executed by his immediate successor, the no less memorable

32. William Rugg, or, Reppes, fortieth abbot of St. Bennet’s in Holme, and native of North Repps, in this county, where his father, of both his names, is said to have resided. He had his education at Cambridge, and was fellow of Gonvill Hall in that university. After being abbot of St. Bennet’s about six years, he was promoted to this see, by way of recompence, as some seem to think, for the part he had acted among the Cambridge divines, in obtaining from that university the judgment his majesty wished, respecting his marriage with queen Catherine. They might also suppose, that his being a warm and stanch stickler for the king’s ecclesiastical supremacy, and influencing those of his convent to subscribe to the same, in 1534, were additional recommendations that contributed to his promotion. But when we consider the hard terms, or humiliating conditions, on which he was to obtain, or hold his episcopal dignity, (that is, by relinquishing the greatest part of the revenue and possessions attached to his see,) it will not be a very easy matter to prove that any favour was intended by this preferment, and much less a recompence or reward for former services: this was certainly very different from Henry’s wonted manner of using his favourites, and rewarding his approved servants. But this point is too uninteresting to merit any further discussion.—Abbot Rugg being promoted to the see of Norwich in 1536, he, by virtue of a private act of parliament, parted with all the lands of his bishopric, except the site of his episcopal palace in Norwich, to the king, by way of exchange for the revenues belonging to the abbey of Holme and priory of Hickling; which last being soon after alienated by him, the whole income, since his time, appertaining to the see of Norwich, has been only the estate of Holme monastery, which his successors still enjoy, according to the purport of the said act, which, continuing unrepealed, gave occasion to bishop Montague, in the time of Charles I. to subscribe himself, in his leases, “Richard, by divine permission, lord bishop of Norwich, and Head Abbot of St. Benedict’s de Hulm.” The exchange of the lands of the bishopric, for those of the Abbey of St. Benedict’s and priory of Hickling, is said to have been made by Abbot Rugg some months before his election to the see of Norwich, [372] though not before his promotion thither had been predetermined. We are further informed that this prelate alienated from his bishopric, not only the priory of Hickling, but many good manors besides, belonging to the abbey, some by absolute gift, others upon trifling exchanges, and gave long leases, so that, at last, he was unable to maintain the state of the bishopric, and forced to resign, with an annual pension of 200 marks. He seems to have been a singularly improvident and thoughtless prelate, and very different from most of that order, who seldom lose sight of their terrestrial interests, or temporal concerns, whatever they may do as to those that are of an eternal nature. After having resigned the see for the paltry pittance of 200 marks, or, as some say, 200l. per annum, he died in 1550. In allusion to the straits and difficulties to which his manifest and manifold indiscretions had reduced him, one of the members or officers of his household is said to have made the following verses on his resignation:

Poor Will, thou rugged art and ragged all:
Thy abbey cannot bless thee in such fame,
To keep a pallace fair and stately hall,
When gone from thence what should maintaine the same.

First pay thy debts, and hence return to cell,
And pray the blessed saint whom thou dost serve,
That others may maintaine the pallace well;
For if THOU stayst, we all are like to starve.

The convent, or abbey of St. Benedict’s, appears to have been his chief palace, or place of residence, during the whole time of his sustaining the episcopal character: after which it soon went into decay, and ceased to be the residence of his successors; with whom however we have no further concern, as they were no longer the temporal lords and masters of Lynn. Here therefore ends this episcopal catalogue; which exhibits a pretty long list of names, though but few among them appear to have merited the praise and benediction of their contemporaries, or the veneration and imitation of posterity.

CHAP. III.

State of Lynn previously and subsequently to its becoming a corporate-town, or free borough, with general remarks on that event, and on the progressive state of society in the towns and cities of this country, as well as at Lynn, in those times.

It is difficult to ascertain the exact state of this town, or the nature of its police, and the social condition of its inhabitants, not only before and at the Conquest, but also for a good while after, any further than that its population appears to have then consisted chiefly, if not entirely, of the bishop’s slaves or vassals, governed by such agents or officers as he thought proper to appoint, whose administration as may be reasonably presumed, would not always be of the mildest, or most equitable and unexceptionable description. Had there been now in existence regular and authentic records of the affairs of the town, in those days, we should probably discover that its police, at least the spirit of it, bore but too much resemblance to our present West Indian jurisprudence. Slaves, in those ages, seem to have constituted the bulk of our population; and were, in all probability, the offspring of the lower orders of the original inhabitants, whose lives had been spared, when the Anglo-Saxons over-run and conquered the country, on condition of submitting to perpetual servitude. Such seems to have been the origin of those slaves of different descriptions which formerly abounded in this country for many ages. These, in country places, were the cultivators of the soil, or tillers of the ground; and in the towns, they were the tradesmen, mechanics, artificers, and labourers. In short, both in the towns and in country places all useful employments were occupied by them. As to their masters, the nobility, gentry, and every description of military men, who constituted the great or main body of reputed freemen, they were all above engaging in any such employments. War and the chace were the only occupations that were deemed worthy of them; and there lay the whole stock or sum of their knowledge and acquirements. Literature of every kind they usually set at nought; scorning to learn so much as to write their own names, as an attainment that would be too degrading for an English gentleman. Under such beings, how unenviable, miserable, and deplorable must have been the condition of the enslaved or unfree part of the community.

Of the original, low, and servile state of the inhabitants of our English, and other European towns, and their progress from thraldom to freedom, no one has perhaps given a juster account than Dr. Adam Smith, in the second volume of his celebrated Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. He there observes that the inhabitants of cities and towns, after the fall of the Roman Empire, were not more favoured than those of the country.

“They consisted, indeed, of a very different order of people from the first inhabitants of the ancient republicks of Greece and Italy. These last were composed chiefly of the proprietors of lands, among whom the public territory was originally divided, and who found it convenient to build their houses in the neighbourhood of one another, and to surround them with a wall, for the sake of common defence. After the fall of the Roman empire, on the contrary, the proprietors of land seem generally to have lived in fortified castles on their own estates, and in the midst of their own tenants and dependants. The towns were chiefly inhabited by tradesmen and mechanics, who seemed in those days to have been servile, or very nearly of servile condition. The privileges which we find granted by ancient charters to the inhabitants of some of the principal towns in Europe, sufficiently shew what they were before these grants. The people to whom it is granted as a privilege, that they might give away their own daughters in marriage without the consent of their lord, that upon their death, their own children, and not their lord, should succeed to their goods, and that they might dispose of their own effects by will, must, before those grants, have been either altogether, or very nearly in the same state of villanage with the occupiers of land in the country. They seem, indeed, to have been a very poor, mean set of people, who used to travel about with their goods from place to place, and from fair to fair, like the hawkers and pedlers of the present times. In all the different countries of Europe then, in the same manner as in several of the Tartar governments of Asia at present, taxes used to be levied upon the persons and goods of travellers, when they passed through certain manors, when they went over certain bridges, when they carried about their goods from place to place in a fair, when they erected in it a booth or stall to sell them in. These different taxes were known in England by the names of passage, pontage, lastage, and stallage. Sometimes the king, sometimes a great lord, would grant to particular traders, to such particularly as lived in their own demesnes, a general exemption from such taxes. Such traders, though in other respects of servile condition, were upon this account called Free-traders. They in return usually paid to their protector a sort of annual poll tax. In those days protection was seldom granted without a valuable consideration, and this tax might, perhaps, be considered as compensation for what their patrons might lose by their exemption from other taxes. At first, both those poll-taxes and those exemptions seem to have been altogether personal, and to have affected only particular individuals, during either their lives, or the pleasure of their protectors. In the very imperfect accounts which have been published from Domesday-book, of several of the towns of England, mention is frequently made, sometimes of the tax which particular burghers paid, each of them, either to the king, or to some other great lord, for this sort of protection; and sometimes of the general amount only of all these taxes.” [377]

“That part of the king’s revenue which arose from such poll-taxes in any particular town, used commonly to be lett in farm, during a term of years for a rent certain, sometimes to the sheriff of the county, and sometimes to other persons. The burghers themselves frequently got credit enough, to be admitted to farm the revenues of this sort which arose from their own town, they becoming jointly and severally answerable for the whole rent.”

In return, being allowed to collect it in their own way, and to pay it into the king’s exchequer by the hands of their own bailiff, they would be altogether freed from the insolence of the
king’s officers; a circumstance in those days of no small importance.