Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/496

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XL MAY 22, im

(Qumis.

WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

MUSTERS IN DEVONSHIRE : TINNERS :

FOREIGNERS.

I SUBMIT for elucidation the following extracts (particularly the italicized words) from the (head) churchwardens' accounts of South Tawton, Devon :

1535-6. v s delib'at' Will'mo Oxenham & Johe Baron in auxilio satellitu'.

1538-9. Sol' Will'mo Oxenham p' factur' sedular' de le mowyste [making the schedule of the muster] iiij d.

15567. Pd for caryche [carriage] of the harnes, and for mett and dre'cke, and for the iiij men whyche did apere before S r Thomas Denes iij".

1556-7 to Wylla' Smith for the Tyners

xxij.

1557-8. In going to Chagford ij tymes viij d.

1557-8 layed out for Settynge forthe of the

ffereners xlj" v d.

1571-Payed for makynge of a byll for the muster of the ferryners xij d.

1571-2. Payed for the leke byll for the tynn's [tinners] xij d.

1572-3. Payed at the muster at Chagford for ent'yng of o'r bill vj d.

15867. Payed John Thomas for y" discharg' of y" farynars from bringing of their armour to Dunce- ford xviij d.

Sir Thomas Dennis was Sheriff of Devon (for the seventh time) in 1554-5. In 1539 he was one of the Commissioners ap- pointed to defend the coast of Devon ; and in a set of instructions and orders "taken"* in 1558, by Francis, Earl of Bedford, Lieutenant-General of the counties of Devon, Cornwall, and Dorset, and the city of Exeter, a list of names of com- manders assigned to the defence of different places in Devonshire is headed " The Devyc'on [Division] of the Conntye of Devon, S r Thomas Dennies, knight." '

In a previous number (10 S. vii. 428)f I quoted several other allusions to " Tinners " as soldiers. The ' Fodinse Regules ' and Camden's ' Britannia,' to which I was kindly referred (10 S. viii. 55), unfortunately do not treat of them in their military aspect.


 * St. Pap. Dom. Mary, vol. xii., No. 67.

t In quoting " the nomber of th'abell men mustered within the said countie, as well Tynners as Marryners," I overlooked a small " ix " under the " M," so that the total really comes to 9,224. On comparing with Stowe MS. 570, wherein the able men of the county in 1577 are stated to number 10,000, it is obvious that the above total included and did not consist solely of Tinners and Mariners.

Had they special functions in war r corresponding with those of the " Sappers and Miners " ? Among the Savile-Foljambe MSS. (printed by the Royal Comm. on Hist. MSS., p. 7) is one dated 15 Feb., 1557, " at the English Camp before Hawme," warrant- ing a payment by the Earl of Pembroke to Thomas Langford, " for the wages of 200 miners." Could these have been Dartmoor Tinners ?

Chagford was the nearest Stannary town to South Tawton ; and it occurs to me that possibly only such of the men of South Tawton as were " stannators " (i.e. Tinners) mustered there, while the residue, who might be classed as " Foreigners " in the language of the Stannary Courts, may have had to repair to musters at Dunsford, the seat of the rural deanery in which South Tawton then lay.

If we are to interpret " fereners " in the wider sense of non-natives of England, 1 should like to know what were the peculiar obligations of such men in regard to musters. I am aware that aliens were more heavily taxed in Lay Subsidies, &c., than natives,, and I understand that in 1542 they were formally prohibited from carrying bow and arrows without the king's licence ; but these considerations hardly bear on the items above.

I am rather puzzled to find in the South Tawton accounts statements of local pay- ments to " mustermasters," thus :

1662. For the Muster-Master's fee for half a year I 8 4 d.

1662. For muster master's fee for half a year- 10 d.

I had understood that these officers were commissioned and paid by the sovereign. In a letter of 1586* to the Earl of Derby, respecting the training of 600 footmen in the county of Chester, he is urged to select men of a class " who will be at the charge of their own diet for the six days of their training," and captains, &c., who will " not

look for any sold or pay considering the

charge of the mustermaster is borne by the Queen." In a certificate of 1584 of a muster in the Western Counties (St. Pap. Dom. Eliz., vol. clxxiii., No. 99) there is a memorandum that " these men were but only viewed the first day by the muster- master, and not trayned, for that the gent, of the countrey undertooke to do it w l oute his presence."

Finally, I should be very glad to be informed at what centres respectively, and

Coll., vol. xvi. p. 137-
 * Cited by Alfred Kidley Bax in Surrey Arch.