THE ANCIENT OFFICE OF PURVEYOR TO THE KING.

THE office of Purveyor to the royal household, at the present day, is very different in its character from that which was formerly exercised under the same name. The Purveyor of modern times is nothing more than a tradesman who serves the king precisely as he would serve any other customer, and generally at as cheap a rate; the Purveyor of ancient days was an officer employed to enforce a very obnoxious prerogative, and for that purpose armed with a large share of power, which he generally contrived to abuse to his own profit and the great oppression of his fellow-subjects.

The "profitable prerogative of purveyance and pre-emption," as Blackstone calls it, was a right enjoyed by the crown of buying up provisions and other necessaries by the intervention of the king's Purveyors for the use of the royal household, at an appraised valuation, in preference to all others, and even without consent of the owner; and also of forcibly impressing the carriages and horses of the subject to do the king's business on the public roads in the conveyance of timber, baggage, and the like, however inconvenient to the proprietor, upon paying him a settled price. This prerogative prevailed pretty generally throughout Europe during the scarcity of gold and silver. In those early times the king's household was supported by specific venders of corn and other victuals, from the tenants of the respective demesnes

Many lands were from time to time granted to individuals, on condition of their yielding to the king certain supplies of provisions; the reservations, however, were often small, and many of them only to be rendered when the king travelled into the country where the lands lay. In some cases special care was taken that he should not make the service burdensome by paying his visits too often; as in the case of William, son of William Alesbury, who held lands in Alesbury, upon the tenure of finding amongst other things, three eels for the king when he should come to Alesbury in the winter, and two green geese in the summer; the number of visits, however, not to exceed three in the year.

There was also a continual market kept at the palace-gate to furnish viands for the royal use. This was superintended by an officer called " Clerk of the Market of the King's House," who was to burn all false weights and measures, to precede the king in his progresses, and warn the people to bake and brew and make provision against his coming, and by the oaths of twelve men to set the prices of provisions, beyond which no persons attending the court were to pay.

These arrangements answered all necessary purposes in those times, so long as the king's court continued in any certain place. But when it removed from one part of the kingdom to another, (as was formerly very frequently done,) it was found necessary to send Purveyors beforehand, to get together a sufficient quantity of provisions and other necessaries for the household and lest the unusual demand

should raise them to an exorbitant price, the powers above mentioned were vested in these Purveyors, "who in process of time greatly abused their authority, and became a great oppression to the subject, though of little advantage to the crown."

The king's butler had a right to choose for the king two hogsheads of wine out of every merchant's ship laden with wine, one in the prow, the other in the poop, paying to the merchants only twenty shil

lings each; he might take more if he would at a price to be fixed by the king's appraisers. Purveyance, however, was to be made between sun and sun, and nothing was to be taken in the highway. Hides, leather, and other necessaries were taken for making the king's saddles; beans and pease for his horses. Lord Coke says, that meat and drink could be taken by the king, only when in his progress, and that in his standing-house he could not take beer, ale, or bread, being manufactured; but malt, having the substance of barley remaining, might be taken.

In the reign of John, the abuses of purveyance had risen to such a height that they were made the subject of three articles of Magna Charta, which the barons obtained from that monarch at Runnymede. By the first, the constable or bailiff of a castle was restrained from taking corn or other chattels of any man not of the town where the castle was, without making immediate payment, unless the seller agreed to wait; but if the seller was of the town, three weeks were allowed for payment by the first confirmation of this charter in the beginning of the reign of Henry the Third. By the 30th article of John's charter, no sheriff or bailiff of the king, or any other, was to take any man's horses or carriages but by his consent; the subsequent charters add, "but at the old prices limited, namely, a carriage with two horses tenpence a day, with three horses fourteenpence a day." The 31st chapter of John's charter prohibited the taking of any man's wood for the king's castles or other necessaries, without the owner's consent; and this was confirmed by the subsequent charters. It appears, nevertheless, that the practice of taking the wood continued, and that money was extorted from the owners by demanding such as grew about the mansion-house and could ill be spared.

It appears by the statute of Westminster, passed in the third year of Edward the First, that Purveyors used to enter houses under colour of buying for the king, break the doors, locks, and windows, and thrash out and carry away the corn, and that they paid no more regard to the houses of prelates than to those of the laity. Edward the Second, in his sixteenth year, sent his writ to the justices of the King's Bench, commanding them to punish the infringers of the statutes upon this subject; but the steward of his household continued to exercise his power of purveyance with a high hand even in the city of London, notwithstanding the great privileges of that place; for in the eighteenth year of Edward's reign, he commanded that no fishmonger, on pain of imprisonment, should go out of the city to forestall any sea or fresh fish, or send them to any great lord or religious house, until the king's Purveyors should have made their purveyance for the king.

In the fourth of Edward the Third, an act reciting that the king, queen, and their children, oppressed the people by not paying for corn, hay, and cattle, and other "vittailes" which they took, and by taking twenty-five quarters of corn for twenty, measuring by heap, and taking hay and litter at less than the value; directs accordingly that nothing be taken without consent of the owner, that corn be taken "by the strike as men use throughout the kingdom," and that the things be taken at their true value by constables and other good men of the vill who should not be enforced by menace or duress to assess any other price than their oath would allow.

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No severity of law, however, could restrain the rapacity of these plunderers; and in the twentieth year of Edward the Third, several Purveyors attainted and hanged for offending against the statutes, Yet in spite of this example, it was found necessary

the money.

In the 36th of Edward the Third, some very im'portant regulations were made for correcting the abuses of purveyance. According to Sir Edward Coke, this act was passed in consequence of a Latin work addressed to the king, by Simon Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, sharply inveighing against the intolerable abuses of Purveyors and purveyances, and earnestly pressing and advising him to make remedies for those insufferable oppressions and wrongs offered to his subjects. It, however, was doubtless in a great measure the effect of a very strong petition of the Commons.

A very curious illustration of the abuses of purveyance, and the unblushing impudence of Purveyors in the reign of Edward the Sixth, is afforded to us in an account of the behaviour of one William Pallet, deputed Purveyor for the King's Majesty's provision of poultry, &c., in the town of Cambridge. It appears that Mr. Pallet exercised his powers so harshly as to excite a disturbance among the people of the town, and to render necessary the Vice-Chancellor's interference to pacify them. Instead of taking the provisions at prices fixed in the manner required by the statutes, he took everything at his own price; and what was worse, he took the liberty of purveying for his friends as well as for the King's Majesty, very candidly confessing that if he could not do the one he would not do the other. The bold air of effrontery which this man put on, when detected, shows pretty clearly how secure he must have felt of being supported by the court, which in those days was seldom disposed to permit any interference with the prerogative even when abused. When it was proved before his face that he had taken a pheasant and other birds in the king's name, and then sold them to different persons, he answered that he had done so to gratify some friends, and openly affirmed with an oath, that unless he might do his friend's pleasure in the execution of his office, he would not serve the king in it.

The Vice-Chancellor's reasonable request, that he would use his commission discreetly, and that when he had full passage in all the surrounding country, he would spare the market of the town, except he saw a pheasant or anything else fit for the king's table, was treated by Mr. Pallet in the most unceremonious manner; for he contemptuously cast his commission to the Vice-Chancellor and commanded

him to go and serve it himself. He then sent up a false certificate to his master, accusing the ViceChancellor of having said that he should be sued before the king and not suffered within the market. When his master's son was sent down purposely from the court to inquire into this alleged ill-treatment of a royal Purveyor by the officers of the university, Pallet was unable to substantiate his charge; but his effrontery did not desert him, for while he was before

In the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, some of the counties, to avoid the trouble which they had in procuring their money for goods taken by the Purveyors, and which arose, in a great measure, from the many offices, cheques, entries, and comptrolments through which the accounts were to pass, petitioned her to accept the value in money to be yearly paid by the counties. Philips says that she would not hearken to this, but did afterwards come to an agreement, fixing the proportions which several counties should yearly afford in oxen, calves, muttons, poultry, corn, &c.; and that this agreement continues in force during her reign and that of her successor, James the First. In regulating these proportions, the principal burden was imposed on the counties adjacent to the metropolis, they deriving the most benefit from the royal residence; and Philips says that they could well afford to bear it, as their rents in the time of Charles the First were improved to twenty times more than they were in the reign of Henry the Seventh, and ten times more than they were in the eighteenth year of Elizabeth's reign.

But though Elizabeth would not grant the request of the counties that she would accept money instead of provisions, she hanged one of her Purveyors in her thirty-second year for forcibly taking provisions without paying for them. Prosecutions were also carried on in the star-chamber against some of her Purveyors; but she ordered Sir Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper, to stop the proceedings, as being an encroachment on the prerogative royal in her household, and commanded that the matter should be heard before the Lord Buckhurst, Lord Treasurer; the Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admiral; Sir John Fortescue, Chancellor of the Exchequer, (being the commissioners for household causes,) Sir William Knollys, Comptroller of the Household, and the rest of the officers of the Board of Green Cloth, in the Compting-house; and the cause was heard there accordingly.

In Elizabeth's time, too, great complaints were made by the city of London, that the Purveyors took the first carts they could find, and frightened away those persons from the country that used to bring provisions; whereupon, a regulation was made that the carts in London and resorting to it should serve the Queen four times in a year, and the management of the matter was entrusted to the governors of Christ's Hospital.

When Elizabeth was at Nonsuch, in Surrey, her Purveyor of coals used to make out a warrant to the high constables of some Rape in Sussex, to warn carts for the carriage of coals to Nonsuch, appointing a meeting with them to receive the returns on

the warrants. Sometimes the carts went to the places appointed but found no coals to carry; in general, however, it was well understood that the principal object was the preliminary meeting, at which the Purveyor would assign the parties over to a person whom he took with him, to compound for their carriages. This man would take twelve shillings for every load; and he at last raised the sum to fourteen shillings. The justices of Sussex complained of this to the Board of Green Cloth in 1598.

In 1604, soon after the accession of James the First, the Commons determined on a representation to the king of the grievances occasioned by the Purveyors; and Sir Francis Bacon made a long speech on the subject to the king, in the withdrawing chamber at Whitehall.

There was no grievance, (he told the king,) in his kingdom so general, so continual, so sensible, and so bitter to the common subject as that which he was then speaking of. They did not pretend to derogate from his prerogative nor to question any of his regalities or rights; they only sought a reformation of abuses, and a restoration of the laws to which they were born. He complains that the Purveyors take in kind what they ought not to take; they take in quantity a far greater portion than cometh to the king's use, and they take in an unlawful manner. They extort money in gross or in annual stipends, to be freed from their oppression. They take trees, which by the law they cannot do; timber trees which are the beauty, countenance, and shelter of men's houses; that are a loss which men cannot repair or recover. If a gentleman is too hard for them whilst at home, they will watch him out and cut the tree before he can stop it. When a poor man hath his goods taken from him at an under value, and cometh to receive his money, he shall have twelvepence in the pound deducted; nay, they take double poundage, once when the debenture is made, and again when the money is paid.

He tells the king also, that "there is no pound of profit to him, but begetteth three pound damages on the subject, besides the discontent." By law, the Purveyors ought to take as they could agree with the subject; by abuse they took at an enforced price.

By law they ought to make but one apprisement by neighbours in the country; by use they make a second apprizement at the court-gate; and when the subjects' cattle come up many miles, lean and out of plight by reason of great travel, they prize them anew at an abated price. By law they ought to take between sun and sun; by abuse they take by twilight and in the night. By law they ought not to take in the highway, by abuse they take in the ways. This abuse of purveyance, if it be not the most heinous abuse, yet it is the most common and general abuse of all others in the kingdom.

We have other testimony to the abuses arising from purveyance at this period, in the curious confession made by one Richards, when he was examined before the Star-chamber, of the rogueries practised by him and his brethren. He said that they charged ten times the quantity wanted, sold the surplus, and shared the money. They went to the most remote places to make their purveyance, in order to induce the people to come to a composition. They conspired with the high-constables to charge more than enough, and took half the money of them, but gave receipts for the whole, the constables taking the rest. The clerk of the market set the prices below the value and shared the gain. This confession did not, however, save the culprit, who had likewise extorted money under pretence of having a grant for compounding fines on penal statutes, and he was sentenced to stand in the pillory in Westminster, in Cheapside, in three market towns of Dorsetshire, and in three of Somersetshire,-to lose one ear at Dorchester, the other at Wells,-to ride on a horse with his face to the tail, and papers pinned on him, expressing his crime,-to pay a fine of one hundred

pounds,-and to be imprisoned during the king's pleasure.

In the reign of Charles the First, a dispute arose concerning the right which that monarch claimed of digging anywhere for saltpetre, in order to provide gunpowder for his troops. The judges allowed the claim; they held that the king could not "prescribe" for the right, because the art of making gunpowder was brought into England within memory, viz. in the time of Richard the Second, yet, as the same concerned the defence of the realm, the king might take sufficient for that purpose in the nature of purveyance.

During the Commonwealth the powers of purvey. ance fell into disuse; and, in 1661, after the Restoration, the grievance was wholly abolished by the 12th of Charles II., the Parliament at the same time granting to the king, in satisfaction of the interest which he conceded, a certain tax upon beer. In the following year, however, the statute was temporarily relaxed in favour of the king's royal progresses, by an act empowering the clerk, or chief officer of His Majesty's carriages, by warrant from the Green Cloth, to provide carts, &c. for His Majesty's use, and persons refusing to serve were made liable to a penalty. Philips says that it was the want of the ancient purveyance which prevented Charles the Second from making a progress which he had designed into the country in the Summer of 1661.

We shall conclude in the words of Mr. Bray, from whose paper on this subject, in the Archeologia, we have derived most of our information.

Thus have we taken some view of the rise, progress, and extinction of an office which subsisted for ages, without producing to the crown a return at all adequate to the burdens it imposed on the subject. We see Archbishop Islip's words fulfilled; the abolition of purveyance has not occasioned any want of provisions in the king's house, and instead of his people flying from his approach, they fly to meet and welcome him whenever he visits the country.

A WARNING VOICE IN LONDON.
IN London town wags many a tongue,
And nonsense much is spoken;
In London many a lie is told,

And many a promise broken.
But there's a tongue in London town
Whose voice is grave and true;
Ancient as Time the tale it tells,
And yet 'tis always new.

Solemn and loud above the crowd
It booms both night and day;
You hear it when you're close at hand;
You hear it, miles away.

Measured and grave the note it sounds
O'er Middlesex and Surry;

It lingers not for lagging souls,

Nor hastes for those who hurry.
By day while all the world's agog,
Amid the city's humming,
"Mortals," it cries, "Time flies apace,
Eternity is coming!"

By night while wearied folks repose,
Unwearied still and waking,
That solemn warning it repeats

The night's dread stillness breaking.
St. Paul's! Thou hast an awful voice,
But may I never fear it;
Ev'n when thou toll'st my dying hour
May I rejoice to hear it.-D. D. S.

LONDON:

JOHN WILLIAM PARKER, WEST STRAND. PUBLISHED IN WEEKLY NUMBERS, PRICE ONE PENNY, AND IN MONTHLY PARTS, PRICE SIXPENCE.

JOHANNESBERG, AND THE WINES OF THE

RHINE.

COME with me, your faithful friend,

On the wings of thought along,

To where the Rhine his course does bend
Rich vine-covered hills among ;
To his mountains tempest-braving,
Isles with gayest verdure clad,
Fields with yellow harvest waving,

And his woodlands wide outspread.

IN former, papers, we have taken occasion, in describing portions of the scenery of the Rhine, to speak of the vines which are so largely cultivated upon its banks, and to which the fancy of those who have never seen them assigns a larger share in the formation of its picturesque attractions than they are entitled to. In the minds of most persons the Rhine and the vine are inseparably associated; indeed, the appellation of "Father of Wine," which the Germans have fondly bestowed upon this magnificent river, bespeaks as close a connexion between the two things, as the rhymes of poets have established between the

two names.

The wines of the Rhine are chiefly produced along that part of its course which lies between Mentz and Coblentz, and throughout which the river is for the most part confined on both sides by lofty banks, whose light porous soil and rocky substrata furnish the most favourable sites for the cultivation of the grape. The choicest produce is, however, limited, not only to a particular part of this course, but also to one side of it; namely, that fertile and beautiful district of Nassau, which stretches from the Taunus VOL. XIJ

hills to the northern or right bank of the river, and is known by the name of the Rheingau*.

Among the wines of the Rheingau, the first place is, by common consent, yielded to those which are produced on the far-famed domain of Johannesberg.

This golden hill, (says the Baron von Gerning,) is the crown of the Rheingau, in the midst of which it is most picturesquely enthroned. In its vicinity, we feel ourselves in the very heart of the far-famed Rhine-land. We ascend towards the north-east by the wood-covered Rabenkopf, and imperceptibly this detached vine-hill, which is protected towards the north by the Taunus mountains. Behind the priory on the same hill, lies the town or village of Johannesberg, formerly a colony of servants belonging to the establishment; and at the foot of the hill facing the river, lies the little village of Johannesgrund, and also a nunsubterraneous passage, which was founded in 1109 by nery called the Klause, connected with the abbey by a. Richolf, the last Rhinegrave, in honour of St. George, the then patron of the crusaders. The top of the castle commands a most beautiful view of the Rhine, from Biebrich to Bingen, over the nine islands and the twenty intervening cantons. Slender elms adorn the foot of the golden hill, bishopric of Mentz, before the Rheingau came into that which was an allodial possession belonging to the archsee, and before it received the name of Bischoffsberg.

According to the general account, Rhabanus Maurus, previously Abbot of Fulda, first planted this vine-hill, and built a chapel here, dedicated to St. Nicholas; it is also said that he was here elected Archbishop of Mentz in 847. This account, however, rests upon scarcely sufficient authority; it is a fact ⚫ See Saturday Magazine, Vol. XII., p. 105.

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