Thrale history

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This last item was for the upkeep of the roads in the parish. The account was signed by two church wardens, two overseers and two constables and countersigned by two of his majesty’s justices on 16th May 1688. His Majesty was James II and presumably young Lyance had a swelling of the glands, a disease known as the “King’s Evil”, and went to London to receive the Royal touch, which was believed to work a cure.

The Smith and Clerke charity, which still functions, dales in part from 1556, when George Clerke left his will charging his tithe, which was called Boxbury tithe and which he had recently bought from Henry VIII with the annual sum of £6. Fifty shillings for the poor of Stevenage, a like sum for the poor of Bennington, and twenty shillings for the poor of Sandridge. During February 1688 the charily of £3 was distributed by the overseers, just as it is today, except that more people received it then, forty-five in all, including eleven widows. One recipient of a shilling was Robert Law, who three years later started a “place of religious worship for protestant dissenters".

The poverty was becoming worse as the century drew to a close, and in 1699 over £132 was spent on poor relief, involving two nine-penny rates in the year. A third or more of the parish were in receipt of relief, for the low wages were insufficient support life, though men worked for thirteen hours a day; poverty drove some people to drink, so some of the relief was given in kind. In 1687 Thomas Newman was paid three shillings and nine-pence for thatching the widow Jake’s house and the straw cost another three shillings. A year’s rent for the widow Anderson was seventeen shillings, and Timothy Seare for keeping Thomas Cattering one year received £8. When, after eighteen years of married life, Edward Fawcelt died, Mr. Alban Pixley received two and six for making his grave and his family became a charge on the parish. In 1688 a cure for Long Daniel’s child cost the parish half a crown. In 1690 Mrs. Richard Rudd was paid the same sum for laying out a poor woman, and the important beer at the vestry meetings cost one and six. When George Gray was buried two years later, the parish paid seven shillings for his coffin, four and six for a burying suit, one and six for the burial, and £1.7.6 for his widow’s rent, besides the "boon setter for setting her leg and fetching £1.12.0." In 1693 a hat for John Doll cost one and six and at various limes small sums were paid by the parish for shaving or trimming John Hamerton. The constable’s account in 1695 had risen to fifteen pounds and was paid to ‘ye Headborough’, and in 1699 the parish officers must have got merry on six shillings worth of beer at there meeting.

At the opening of the eighteenth century, if one were to take a walk through Sandridge from north to south, it would be found that Roger Ballard was living at Bridehall, and that Mrs. Joseph Sibley had taken over her late husband’s farm at Waterend House; John Adams was at Beechyde, Ralph Thrale at Hammonds with his wife Abigail and four children, Thomas Thrale at Fairfolds, and another Thomas Thrale was at Heerfleld with his wife Elizabeth and four children. Up at Sandridgebury lived Jonathan Cox, and Richard Thrale was at Marshalswick. Thomas George had left the windmill in the hands of his former partners, W. Frankling and M. Sanders, and another Mr. Sanders had a brick kiln, probably on Bernard’s Heath. Jonathan Cox and Daniel South were churchwardens, Thomas Thrale and Lawrence Jacques were overseers, and Thomas Manfield and Thomas George were the parish constables. These offices were seldom held by anyone for more than a year. The Richard Thrale mentioned above died in 1710. He was the eldest son of Richard Thrale, the first of the family to occupy Marshalswick. This elder Richard had died in 1689. He had already buried his wife and daughter in the chancel of the church alongside his sister Rose Smith. He left behind him five sons, and to the fourth son Ralph he bequeathed "half a dozen napkins of those that are at my dwelling house, and these goods following that are likewise at my son Thomas’ being one coverlid and feather bed, five pairs of sheets, one bolster and one brass pottage pot, one bedstead and curtains, one coffer set of the middle sort of the pewter dishes"¹⁰ It was from this branch of the family that one of the greatest friends of Dr. Johnson was descended. Henry Thrale’s grandfather Ralph, brother to Richard Thrale of Marshalswick, had moved to Offley and it was his son Ralph who passed on to his son a great fortune made from the Southwark brewery. Henry had married Hester Lynch Salusbury and it was her wit and charm which was the delight of the Johnsonian age. Boswell tells much of the intimacy between Dr. Johnson and the Thrales and when in 1781 the brewery of “H. Thrale &. Co.” was sold for £135,000 to Barclay and Perkins after the death of Henry Thrale, Dr. Johnson, one of the executors, exclaimed during the auction: "we are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice". The male succession of this branch of the Thrale family ended with the death of Henry Thrale’s son at the age of ten.

The relief of the poor was a more serious problem in the eighteenth century than it is today, costing about a million pounds a year to the ratepayers of England. There was no national scheme, but each parish was responsible for its own poor. The system of extremely low wages, coupled with

Footnotes

6. Edward Steele who visited Sandridge in 1715. His notes about the Church are in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, (Gough Herts MSS4).↩︎
7. Record Of The Hertford County Sessions. Nine volumes edited by W. J. Hardy, F.S.A, and Colonel William Le Hardy, M.C., F.S.A. Vol.6, p.65.↩︎
8. Record Of The Hertford County Sessions. Nine volumes edited by W. J. Hardy, F.S.A, and Colonel William Le Hardy, M.C., F.S.A. Vol.6, p.104.↩︎
9. H.H.Scott, History of Tropical Medicine, Vol.2, p.735.↩︎
10. J.H. Bushy in Notes and Queries, Nov. 1948.↩︎