For sidelights on English country life in the seventeenth and
eighteenth century we can commend the new volume admirably edited by Mr. S. A. Peyton, of Reading University, for the Oxfordshire Record Society. The Churchwardens' Presentments in the Oxfordshire Peculiars present the failing efforts of spiritual units to supervise manners and morals and to excommunicate offenders. There were three " peculiars "-two groups of parishes under Thome and Banbury subject to the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, and a third group under Dorchester, where the Archdeacon of Oxford had jurisdiction. The churchwardens were some- times zealous but were often indifferent. Some of them reported non-churchgoers, whether Roman Catholics or Dissenters, especially under Charles I. and Charles II. Others were ready to present cases of immorality. There is one instance at least of a man selling his wife to another man by weight, at 2id. a pound. One village complained that the parson could not or would not preach. It is noticeable, as the editor says, that the non-churchgoers were seldom a penny the worse for the proceedings against them, and that in the eighteenth century these peculiar " courts became mere formalities. Yet the practice of requiring offenders to do penance died out very slowly. A case occurred as late as 1882.
Previous page
