This article was originally published in the July 2000 edition of Soul Search, the journal of The Sole Society.

Date: 31 March, 2000. A chilly, overcast day in Brighton, Sussex.

The sign says ‘Local Studies Library’. I step inside and at once notice several shelves on which appear to be complete sets of both the Sussex Archaeological Collection and Sussex Notes and Queries. Even better, there is an index. As I turn the pages the 20th century seems to recede. The journey begins.

I wonder if the steward of Arundel’s henchman, by our standards guilty of kidnap and extortion, and the pious Walter who granted land to the priory were one and the same. And a century and a half later, was the Member of Parliament for Midhurst, Sussex a descendant?

A volume of 16th century Sussex inquests is not surprisingly full of sad tales. It provides an insight not only into crime and punishment but into the social attitudes of the time. In the village of Shipley, one poor woman by reason of her insanity was ‘bound by her shin with an iron plough chain to a post in her husband’s dwelling house. With a candle in both hands she set fire to the house and so feloniously burned herself to death.’ Suicide was of course a felony and the goods and chattels of a man in Peasmarsh who hanged himself from a beam in his kitchen with ‘a fotheringe lyne’ were held forfeit and granted to Henry, earl of Huntingdon, lord of the liberty.

The Protestation Returns of 1641/2 were a protest by Parliament against ‘an arbitrary and tyrannical government’, in other words King Charles I. All males aged 18 or over were required to sign a declaration of ‘Belief in the Protestant Religion, Allegiance to the King and support for the Rights and Privileges of Parliament’.

In the eight years since the Protestation Returns the political climate has changed. These were uncertain times when your religion or your politics could cost you dear.

In the meantime, life goes on and the roads need maintaining.

Many of the published sources are in essence merely lists of names, for example, marriage licences, owners of property, Members of Parliament, or else small fragments of information, accounts of incidents, tantalising glimpses into the past.

Occasionally a document survives which is so vivid and detailed that we gain a real picture of the life of our ancestors.

Well over two hundred inhabitants of the town are cited for offences which suggests that the authorities were attempting to ‘clean up the town’ in every sense by imposing what today might be described as a policy of zero tolerance. As well as upholding the sabbath there was a need to maintain public order.

The latter names are just some of over forty Rye inhabitants found in breach of an Act passed ten years earlier, ‘an Act dealing with the decay of cap making in England’, which stated—“Every person (except maiden ladies and gentlemen, all noble personages and every Lord, Knight and gentleman of the possession of twenty marks land by the year and except such as have borne the office of wardship in any city) shall on Sundays and Holydays wear on their heads a cap of wool, made in England by the cappers. Penalty ¾ a day.”

Some residents of Rye were untidy to extremes, posing a threat to health and safety.

We know that Rye had at least nine bakers as they were named in the inquest ‘because ther bred did not hold weight.’ They were not the only offenders.

As well as making shoes from curried horse skin to avoid paying duty on real leather, John Sole, shoemaker of Rye, was cited for ‘incroching of the townes ground at his dwelling howse’ and for ‘throwing his soyle over the waule into the towne diche.’ Hardly a model citizen, yet had he been, he might have lived and died without leaving a mark on history. Instead, his misdemeanours have earned him a kind of immortality.

The overall impression is of a busy fishing community where boats, gear and timber obstruct the streets and heaps of ‘soyle’, blocked drains and a general lack of neighbourliness contribute to some very unsanitary conditions.

The sights and smells of a mediaeval Sussex fishing port in the reign of the first Elizabeth are still in my head as I cross the road and walk through the gardens of the Brighton Pavilion. A tourist sign announces that once in this very place stood Brighthelmstone, a village of wooden hovels, lath and plaster cottages and a pebble bank on which fishing boats were hauled up and nets dried, a community not so very different from the then more prosperous town of Rye a few miles along the coast.

A group of French schoolchildren chatter excitedly as they wait for their coach, tourists and locals mingle in the shops and lanes of modern Brighton and office workers sip coffee in Costa’s and watch the world go by. So many things we are able to take for granted today, electricity, motorised transport, education, law and order, sanitation, healthcare, leisure time, the list virtually endless. Like many foreign countries, the past is a great place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.

Most large towns have a time machine, thinly disguised as a local studies library or a county record office. Why not visit yours and tell us about your experiences.

Take a notepad, something to write with and some small change for the photocopier. Enjoy.

The Local Studies Library, Brighton, West Sussex, the Sussex Record Society, Sussex Notes and Queries and the Sussex Archaeological Collection.

Thanks to the many anonymous clerks, record keepers and public servants over the centuries through whose efforts these invaluable records are still in existence.

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