The Second Hanoverian King and the Coronation, 1727
George Augustus became George II on 11 June 1727, when his father died on the road to Hanover. The new king had already spent more than twelve years in Britain as Prince of Wales, including the months in 1716 when he had governed during his father’s absence and passed through Chichester. At the beginning of his reign Robert Walpole occupied the centre of government, Edward Waddington was Bishop of Chichester, Richard Pay owned Brewhurst, and the Loxwood chapel trustees were approaching another transfer of the land and houses entrusted to their care. The new king was forty-three. His wife Caroline of Ansbach had formed a close political partnership with him, and Walpole understood that Caroline could help maintain the king’s confidence in the ministry. George initially favoured changing his father’s ministers, but Walpole secured parliamentary support for a Civil List of £800,000 a year to meet the expenses of the royal household and public duties assigned to that revenue. George kept Walpole in office. Ministers then prepared the first election of the new reign while maintaining the standing army and the measures protecting the Hanoverian succession.
George and Caroline were crowned together in Westminster Abbey on 11 October 1727. The Archbishop of Canterbury anointed the king, and the coronation service took place within the Church of England. Across Sussex the proclamation of the new sovereign changed the names used in prayers for the royal family. The prescribed prayers for the royal family named George and Caroline in churches throughout the Diocese of Chichester.
Arthur Onslow Becomes Speaker, January 1728
The general election of 1727 brought Arthur Onslow into the House of Commons as a member for Surrey. He had also been returned for Guildford but chose the county seat. On 23 January 1728 the Commons elected him Speaker, the officer responsible for presiding over debates, deciding who could speak and maintaining the procedures through which Parliament passed legislation. Onslow would be re-elected to the chair in successive Parliaments, becoming one of the most enduring figures in the Commons during George II’s reign. Onslow belonged to a family with extensive interests in Surrey and western Sussex. Other branches held land at Drungewick and around Loxwood, where manorial property and farms brought the family into contact with tenants, estate officers and neighbouring landowners. Their name had been associated with parliamentary business for generations. As Speaker, Arthur Onslow dealt with members whose votes controlled taxation and borrowing; in 1757 he headed a list of promoters seeking parliamentary powers to improve the road through Alfold and Loxwood. The road project would bring an Act passed at Westminster onto the clay tracks approaching the River Lox.
Sussex politicians also worked through the Commons, county elections and the small parliamentary boroughs. Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle, used extensive family estates and political connections to support Whig candidates and promote ministerial allies. At Petworth, great household expenditure and the administration of farms depended upon stewards, tenants and local tradesmen. Parliament authorised land taxes which Sussex assessors collected from the owners of property, while country landowners could petition for roads that crossed several parishes.
Parish Relief and the Approach to the 1730 Conveyance
Wisborough Green’s parish officers dealt with a removal order concerning Robert Moorey in July 1729. A removal order was a legal direction concerning a person’s place of settlement, the parish responsible for relief when poverty made support necessary. Churchwardens and overseers gathered testimony about residence, service and family connections; magistrates could confirm responsibility and authorise removal between parishes. Loxwood belonged to Wisborough Green for these purposes, so the officers appointed for the mother parish also had duties throughout its outlying hamlets. The same officers could collect poor rates from occupied property, arrange food or money for people in need and seek work for those able to earn part of their maintenance. At Horsham a new parish workhouse had opened in 1727 after local officers borrowed money and contracted for accommodation. Wisborough Green’s dated records for these years principally describe settlement and removal proceedings. A parish-wide entry identifies the person named in the order while leaving open whether the household occupied Wisborough Green village, Loxwood or another part of the parish.
Another set of documents concerned property devoted to the chapel of St John the Baptist at Loxwood. Those trustees administered houses, fields and rents which helped meet the costs of the chapel. Their title came through conveyances made to named local men, and periodic transfers became necessary as earlier trustees died. By the close of George I’s reign three members of the trustees appointed in 1693 were identified as the legal holders able to make the next transfer.
The Loxwood Chapel Trustees Execute a New Deed, 1730
In 1730 John Shudd of Loxwood, described as a gentleman, Richard Trower of Loxwood, a yeoman, and John Butler of Warnham, also a yeoman, conveyed the chapel property to a renewed body of trustees. Their deed linked people who had administered the foundation during George I’s reign with men who would be responsible for it under George II. The transfer concerned legal title to the property supporting the chapel and enabled the new trustees to act together when tenants paid rents, repairs were required or another conveyance became necessary.
The men named in the renewed trust included John Shudd, Richard Pay, John Layker, John King of Greathouse, George King, another John King identified as the son, Henry Trower, John Napper the elder and John Napper the younger. Henry Trower was the son of Richard Trower, and the younger Napper belonged to another father-and-son pair. The deed drew upon families long associated with Loxwood property, alongside men whose interests reached Kirdford, Warnham and neighbouring Sussex settlements. The different occupations and residences mattered: a gentleman, yeoman farmer or mill-property owner could supply witnesses, knowledge of a field boundary and practical oversight when a tenant changed. Richard Pay had bought Brewhurst from the Mille family in 1720. His appointment joined the chapel’s legal guardians with a man who owned a substantial house-and-mill estate east of Loxwood. Brewhurst included land, barns, stables, orchards, gardens and mill rights along the River Lox. The road through Brewhurst Lane reached the stone bridge built across the river in 1672, allowing carts to carry grain towards the mill and farm. Pay’s role placed a property owner with immediate knowledge of local tenants, water rights and roads among those holding the chapel’s endowed land.
The name Greathouse in the trustee list connected John King with a particular Loxwood holding. The Shudd, Trower, King, Laker and Napper families appear in deeds from earlier generations, and the chapel’s property required clear title precisely because rent and ownership could pass through marriages, inheritance and sale. The trustees undertook this conveyance while William Booth’s vicarage exercised responsibility for worship and pastoral duties. A new body of property holders could manage the income without appointing itself to the work of the parish minister.
The House Beside Loxwood Bridge, April 1730
A lease and release dated April 1730 also recorded an earlier occupier of property near the River Lox crossing. The document referred to Abraham Mills, a Loxwood husbandman, whose family had dealt with a house and land at this location in 1700. It described the Queen’s Highway as the western boundary. The old farmhouse stood beside the bridge and the way climbing towards Loxwood Chapel and Loxwood Place, where the road linked the river crossing with the more established settlement higher up the slope.
The building would later be known as Bridge House and eventually become the Onslow Arms. Its timber-framed core dates from the later sixteenth or early seventeenth century. During George II’s early years it was part of a working roadside property, with a bridge and track close enough to affect access to its ground. In the 1730 deed the road mattered as a legal boundary: neighbours and purchasers had to know which land belonged with the house and which ground provided the public passage. In 1757 Parliament would authorise a turnpike through this same approach to the River Lox.
Bishop Francis Hare Comes to Chichester, 1731
Edward Waddington died in 1731, and Francis Hare became Bishop of Chichester. Hare had held prominent church appointments and had served as chaplain to the Duke of Marlborough, a connection that placed him among the senior clergy familiar with court politics and the arguments that divided Church and government. In Chichester he inherited the cathedral, diocesan officers and rural clergy whose work extended across Sussex from coastal towns to parish churches and chapels in the Weald.
William Booth’s earlier inclusion in the 1724 clergy survey, under the Latin entry ‘Wisborough Green cum capella de Loxwood’, recorded the relationship between the parish church and its chapel. Under Hare, ordination, visitation, licensing and church discipline passed through the bishop’s office and its officials. Parish clergy conducted services, kept registers and ministered to households; the Loxwood trustees dealt with their own rents and title deeds. When a vacancy, a dispute over a building or a question about a cleric arose, the parties could be required to produce written authority from Chichester. The poor-law papers also named families who were drawn into parish proceedings. Joseph Carpenter appeared in a removal case in February 1730; Phillip Richardson, Richard Stedman, Thomas Parkhurst and Henry Albury appeared in orders in 1731. These named cases reveal the local officials’ repeated need to investigate residence and financial responsibility. An order dated 1732 concerning William Batchellor also followed the cases recorded towards the end of George I’s reign.
Walpole’s Excise Proposal and the Sussex Landowners, 1733
Robert Walpole proposed a new arrangement for the duties charged on wine and tobacco in 1733. Smuggling, false declarations and the movement of imported goods through warehouses had reduced the revenue ministers expected. The proposal would have put these commodities under a more closely supervised excise system, involving officers who could inspect goods after they had entered the country. Merchants, opposition politicians and many voters objected to the enlarged powers of revenue officers. Crowds and petitions helped force Walpole to withdraw the proposal.
The dispute mattered to Sussex because coastal shipping, inland carriers and customs duties connected the county to imported tobacco, spirits, wine and tea. Merchants supplied the towns, shops distributed goods to smaller settlements, and taxes helped meet government expenditure. Landowners and parliamentary candidates heard complaints about duties alongside grievances concerning land tax and the cost of war. Arthur Onslow managed the Commons debate as Speaker while Newcastle and his associates counted votes and defended Walpole’s ministry. Through the 1730s western Sussex farmers had another set of practical concerns. The price received for grain or cattle depended on the cost of taking it to market and the condition of the road. Brewhurst Mill needed customers to arrive with grain, and farms around Loxwood sent timber, animals and produce towards Kirdford, Petworth, Horsham and the Arun valley. The old routes could serve local journeys, but heavy carts cut deep ruts in the Wealden clay.
Elections, Dissent and Parish Business, 1734–1738
The general election of 1734 forced Walpole’s supporters and opponents to seek votes across the county and boroughs. Newcastle used his Sussex connections to support ministerial candidates, while rival landowners and borough interests pressed their own claims. Arthur Onslow was returned for Surrey and elected Speaker again when the new Parliament met. The election gave government supporters a working majority, although criticism of the excise scheme, royal expenditure and the minister’s power appeared in Parliament and printed pamphlets.
Religious difference appeared in Sussex in more tangible form than parliamentary speeches. The General Baptist meeting house erected at Horsham in 1720–21 provided regular worship for people from Horsham, Billingshurst, Slinfold, Shipley and Sullington. Its trustees held property and its congregation kept its own records. The Church of England’s clergy served parish churches under the bishops, while legally protected Protestant dissenters travelled to meeting houses or gathered with neighbours. A family living between Billingshurst and Loxwood could encounter more than one form of public Protestant worship while sharing the same market roads.
Two removals ordered at Wisborough Green in July 1735 concerned Ann Bennett and Sarah Upfield. William Rolph and Sarah Pollington appeared in further orders in 1736. Parish officials assessed whether a person had gained settlement through residence, service, apprenticeship, marriage or other legal qualifications. Their records were kept at parish level, allowing cases from Loxwood’s hamlets to enter the same sequence as cases from the village of Wisborough Green itself.
Queen Caroline died on 20 November 1737. George II grieved for her, while Walpole lost an influential intermediary at court. The king’s son Frederick, Prince of Wales, had already developed a difficult relationship with his parents and attracted politicians who opposed the ministers. Court quarrels and parliamentary divisions now gathered around the next generation of the Hanoverian family, as they had during the reign of George I.
Apprentices, Families and the War with Spain, 1739
On 1 April 1739 a Wisborough Green parish record named George Naldrett in an apprenticeship agreement. Apprenticeship placed a young person in another household to learn work and receive maintenance under terms set out between adults and parish officers. It could provide training for a trade, farm service or another occupation and could also become part of parish arrangements for children whose parents could not support them. The written agreement fixed responsibilities for clothing, board and service. Names in the parish series are evidence for the wider Wisborough Green area, including the hamlets administered from the mother parish.
During the same year Britain went to war with Spain. English merchants had complained about Spanish coastguards inspecting shipping and about the restrictions placed on British trade with Spanish America. The South Sea Company’s contract to carry enslaved Africans into Spanish colonial ports had exposed the company to the same arguments over licences, cargoes and illegal trading. Parliament and newspapers also discussed the seizure of a British merchant captain’s ear, an incident used to stir support for what became known as the War of Jenkins’ Ear. George’s ministers authorised naval action in 1739.
The fleet needed sailors, rope, canvas, gunpowder, provisions and shipbuilding timber. Portsmouth and the Channel coast supplied immediate points of contact between Sussex and the Navy, and men employed at ports faced the pressures of wartime recruitment and trade. Inland farmers and merchants also dealt in grain, livestock and timber carried towards market towns and the coast. A Loxwood miller sold flour or meal through regional trade, while the owner of a woodland holding negotiated timber and fuel prices in a county whose ports dealt directly with naval demand. Admiral Edward Vernon captured the Spanish port of Porto Bello in November 1739. London celebrated the news and patriotic images circulated in print, even while the wider war went on. In Sussex, goods brought ashore from overseas travelled through customs officers, merchants, river routes and packhorse traffic before reaching inland shops. Customs duties and the possibility of evading them connected coastal trade with the roads of the Weald. Over the following decade organised smugglers would bring violence to western Sussex and criminal trials to Chichester.
Bishop Matthias Mawson and a Changing Ministry, 1740–1742
Francis Hare’s episcopate ended in 1740, when Matthias Mawson was translated to Chichester from the bishopric of Llandaff. Mawson had a scholarly career at Cambridge and had already been a college master before joining the episcopate. At Chichester he assumed authority over ordinations, diocesan visitations and the clergy serving Sussex parishes. A chapel such as Loxwood depended on its parish incumbent for the authorised services, while the chapel’s property holders managed the houses and land from which repairs could be financed.
On 12 August 1740 the Wisborough Green papers recorded an apprenticeship agreement naming Thomas Beer. The difference between such documents and the chapel’s trustee deeds was important to the people involved. An apprenticeship fixed the relationship between a child, a master and those responsible for maintenance and training. A trustee conveyance fixed ownership of property and the authority to collect its income. Parish officers and landowners used written agreements because service, rent and responsibility often lasted several years.
War in Europe expanded beyond the Spanish quarrel after the death of Emperor Charles VI in October 1740. Maria Theresa claimed the Habsburg inheritance, and several European powers contested her succession. Britain supported Austria while George II also considered the security of Hanover, the German electorate he ruled alongside his British kingdoms. Parliament voted money for soldiers and alliances; newspapers criticised the cost of protecting the king’s continental possessions. The long pressure on Walpole ended in February 1742 when he resigned after defeats in the Commons and growing dissatisfaction with the handling of the war. George used other ministers, including John Carteret, who advised him closely on German and European policy. Sussex MPs had to decide how to vote on supply and foreign commitments, while customs duties and land taxation contributed to meeting the bills. Onslow presided over the Commons during the crisis without joining the debates as a minister.
Parish responsibility also entered the written record through a bastardy bond concerning Mary Rice, dated 11 April 1741. Such bonds sought financial security for the maintenance of a child born outside marriage so that the expense would be charged to the people legally responsible for the child’s maintenance. The bond belonged to the same practical body of records as the settlement and apprenticeship papers, describing families whose affairs were examined by officers and magistrates.
George II Commands at Dettingen, 1743
On 27 June 1743 George II accompanied the allied army at the Battle of Dettingen beside the River Main in Germany. British, Hanoverian and Austrian troops fought a French force that had attempted to block their advance. George commanded in person and his forces won the battle. His participation made him the last reigning British monarch to lead troops in a battle. News reached Britain through official dispatches and newspapers, followed by sermons and public celebrations arranged for victories.
George’s presence in Germany sharpened criticism at Westminster. Opposition speakers objected to the influence of Hanover on military planning and feared that British money and troops were being committed to protect German territory. Carteret defended the policy as part of a European alliance against France. The king’s interest in the war gave foreign affairs an immediate place in court politics, while Parliament controlled the funds needed to pay armies overseas. Sussex lay between London and the Channel ports through which soldiers, supplies and correspondence travelled. The road network from Petworth, Horsham and Chichester towards Portsmouth or the coast linked rural carriers with larger movements of goods. Local estates sold grain and animals through markets; the army purchased supplies through contractors and established supply routes.
Threats from France and the Jacobite Rising, 1744–1745
In 1744 France prepared an invasion intended to support Charles Edward Stuart, the son of James Francis Edward Stuart. Storms and naval obstruction frustrated the planned landing. Ministers responded with coastal security measures, military orders and attention to correspondence between Jacobites and supporters abroad. The prospect of a French expedition brought the English south coast into the defensive preparations, placing the ports and approaches of Sussex and Hampshire within the same danger as the principal naval bases. Charles Edward landed in the Hebrides in July 1745 and raised his father’s standard at Glenfinnan on 19 August. Highland clans and other supporters joined him. His army entered Edinburgh in September, and on 21 September it defeated the government force commanded by Sir John Cope at Prestonpans. Charles then marched into England in November, hoping English Jacobites would join him and that French forces would land to support the attempt to replace George II.
The Jacobites captured Carlisle and moved through Lancashire and the Midlands. On 4 December they reached Derby, about 125 miles from London. George’s ministers assembled military forces to oppose them and recalled experienced troops from the European war. The government’s ability to maintain communications, carry orders and provision soldiers depended on roads, coaches, carriers and horses throughout England. Sussex magistrates and landowners followed events in a kingdom whose northern counties had already seen towns fall to the invading army.
Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle, was central to the Whig political network that defended George’s government. The family estates and county interests around Sussex helped him maintain parliamentary backing at a time when the old Stuart claim had become an armed invasion. Arthur Onslow had to preside over Parliament as members dealt with emergency measures and voted the money needed by ministers. Bishop Mawson governed Sussex clergy whose established services included prayers for George and the royal family, placing the Church of England’s public worship within the contested succession. On 5 December Charles’s commanders resolved to retreat from Derby. The Jacobite army moved north and returned to Scotland while government forces pursued it. Government troops recaptured the English towns the rebels had held, and campaigning moved back across the Scottish border through the winter. George’s younger son William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, took a leading part in the campaign after his return from continental service.
Culloden and the Parish Officers’ Papers, 1746–1747
The Jacobites defeated General Henry Hawley’s force at Falkirk on 17 January 1746, then withdrew towards Inverness as Cumberland gathered a better supplied government army. On 16 April the two forces met on Culloden Moor. Government artillery and disciplined infantry fire broke the Jacobite attacks, and Cumberland’s troops won a decisive victory. Charles escaped, and further government operations sought to disarm hostile Highland groups and prevent another rising. Trials, executions, forfeitures and severe measures against communities associated with rebellion followed the battle. Leading Tory politicians withheld open support from the Jacobite invasion. George’s ministers kept the major parties represented in Parliament from joining Charles’s attempt to replace the king. Walpole had left office years before the rising; Henry Pelham increasingly directed the Treasury and the House of Commons, while his brother Newcastle managed extensive political interests and the secretaryship of state. The king made appointments and intervened in foreign affairs, but the Commons supplied the money for wars and for the government’s administration.
Wisborough Green’s records name Alice Johnson and Sarah Johnson in removal orders dated 23 August 1746. The entries fall only four months after Culloden, and concern the parish officers’ investigation of legal settlement. Churchwardens and overseers brought such cases before magistrates because the person or household could require relief at another parish’s expense. The records show how a parish carried on the legal work of providing for vulnerable households while Parliament, ministers and the army dealt with a national rebellion.
By 1747 France and Britain had spent years fighting on the Continent and at sea. Privateers took merchant ships, naval blockades interrupted trade and the Treasury borrowed heavily to sustain military expenditure. Westminster’s financial measures reached inland Sussex through taxes on property, consumption and goods handled by merchants. The immediate prospects of a Loxwood household, however, depended as well on wages, the harvest, rent and the price obtained for animals or grain at local markets.
The Sewards at Brewhurst and a Birth in 1748
On 6 March 1748 Wisborough Green parish officers issued a removal order concerning Edmund Willard. The document adds another name to the series showing how magistrates and parish officials dealt with legal settlement in the area. Richard Pay had let Brewhurst to the Seward family after buying the property in 1720. John Seward, a yeoman farmer, occupied Brewhurst during the middle of the eighteenth century, working a holding that included buildings, fields and access to milling property by the River Lox. His son Thomas was born there in 1748, the locality appearing in records under the forms Brewhouse and Brewhurst. Thomas later took over the family holding. Brewhurst House contained two joined timber-framed ranges of approximately 1700, with a substantial brick fireplace and outbuildings serving the farm. The estate also had a long association with watermilling. Grain brought to the mill had to be measured, ground and returned or sold; the wheel, water channels, gearing and millstones needed maintenance. A farmhouse could support several connected kinds of work, from tending livestock and orchards to baking bread and handling the accounts of a tenancy.
During 1748 Britain and France reached the peace settlement of Aix-la-Chapelle, bringing the War of the Austrian Succession to an end. The treaty returned several captured territories and preserved Maria Theresa’s succession to most of her inheritance. War debt and political disputes outlasted the fighting. Ships resumed ordinary commercial routes where peace restored access, while customs officers, merchants and coastal communities dealt with the extensive traffic in taxable and illicit goods.
The Hawkhurst Gang and the Chichester Assizes, 1749
Armed smuggling gangs had operated in Kent and Sussex throughout the 1730s and 1740s. Customs duties on tea, spirits and other imported goods made evasion profitable, and large gangs organised landings along the coast before moving contraband inland by horse. Revenue officers who seized goods faced intimidation and sometimes violent retaliation. The Hawkhurst Gang became notorious for attacks extending far beyond ordinary smuggling disputes, with members involved in robbery, torture and murder. The case that brought several gang members to Chichester began with goods seized by customs officers at Poole. Smugglers broke into the Custom House to recover the cargo. They later attacked William Galley, a customs officer, and Daniel Chater, a shoemaker who had become involved in identifying one of the men. Both were murdered. The investigation reached the county authorities, and a special assize was held at Chichester in January 1749. The trials brought witnesses, prisoners, lawyers and officials to the same city in which the bishop and cathedral chapter conducted their business.
The sentences were carried out with deliberate public severity. Benjamin Tapner was hanged and displayed in chains near Chichester; other condemned men were executed or their bodies placed on routes such as those towards Rake, Slindon and Selsey. A stone on the Broyle Road commemorated the executions connected with the case. Travellers entering the city could encounter the physical instruments of punishment ordered after crimes committed within the smuggling network. The Western Weald was connected with this trade through roads between the Channel coast, markets and towns farther inland. Local carriers used some of the same routes along which legally imported goods reached customers. Customs officers, magistrates and merchants tried to distinguish lawful cargo from goods carried to avoid duties, while the gang’s threats made cooperation with prosecutions dangerous.
In the same year church property and family memorials brought another piece of work to Chichester Cathedral. The Duke of Richmond’s family vault was made in the Lady Chapel around 1749, requiring changes to the floor and to the structure above the burial place. Builders raised the Lady Chapel floor and altered openings as the vault was accommodated. The dukes’ family held Goodwood outside the city, linking the cathedral with the great estate whose successive owners shaped Chichester’s political and social affairs.
Petworth and Goodwood Change Hands, 1750
In February 1750 Algernon Seymour, seventh Duke of Somerset, died, and the great Percy estates passed through an inheritance settlement to Charles Wyndham. Wyndham became second Earl of Egremont and received Petworth House with extensive Sussex land, as well as estates in Yorkshire and Cumbria. The old duke’s arrangements divided a great inheritance between branches of his family, sending property and income to new owners whose stewards had to manage tenants, rents, repairs and farms spread across several counties. Petworth had acquired its imposing late-seventeenth-century house under Charles Seymour, sixth Duke of Somerset, and Elizabeth Percy. The estate’s woods, deer park, fields, roads and nearby town supplied labour and produce while the family spent money on buildings, furnishings and improvements. Charles Wyndham now took charge of those properties. He later employed Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown to alter the parkland and became a collector of classical sculpture, adding new kinds of expenditure to an estate whose origins lay in the agricultural and manorial holdings of the Arun valley.
The Lennox family at Goodwood also faced a succession in 1750. Charles Lennox, second Duke of Richmond, died, and his young son became the third duke. The Goodwood household, racing interests, park and family papers passed into another generation’s control. At Chichester Cathedral the family vault prepared the previous year belonged to the same network of aristocratic burials and church patronage.
Brewhurst House Is Enlarged, about 1750
About 1750 builders added a two-storey timber-framed range at the north end of Brewhurst House. The addition provided new rooms to a farmhouse whose earlier joined ranges had been built around the beginning of the century. A large bread oven occupied the ground floor, and brickwork was used for sections of the east wall and the external chimney stack. The oven required a substantial hearth and flue and brought baking into a purpose-built part of the house, distinct from the older main fireplace at the south end. John Seward occupied Brewhurst as a yeoman farmer under Richard Pay’s ownership. The house stood close to agricultural buildings and the mill property, so extensions could accommodate a growing household and the cooking, storage and work required by a substantial farm. A baker heated a large oven, raked out the fire and used the stored heat for bread; regular baking required fuel, a steady supply of meal and enough space to prepare dough.
During the middle of the eighteenth century builders adapted older Wealden timber frames with brick fireplaces, chimneys and additions. Craftsmen shaped oak, made joints, prepared clay and lime, set bricks and roofed the new range. Every load of heavy building material had to reach Brewhurst along the local tracks or the lane crossing the river at the 1672 stone bridge. By 1757 Parliament would authorise improvements to the principal road running through Loxwood, while individual farm approaches and mill lanes required repairs by those who used and owned them.
The Prince of Wales Dies and Parish Names Enter the Record, 1751
Frederick, Prince of Wales, died on 20 March 1751 at the age of forty-four. His estrangement from George II had been a long feature of court politics, and his household had attracted leading figures opposed to the king’s ministers. Frederick’s death made his eldest son George, a boy of twelve, heir to the throne. The younger George would be educated for kingship during the following decade while his grandfather governed through changing ministries and increasingly expensive wars.
At Wisborough Green a removal order of 27 April 1751 named Jane Curtis; another dated 24 December concerned Nathaniel Hammond. The same parish series contains an apprenticeship agreement for Mary Burges, also called Nye, dated 24 September. The names appear in separate legal proceedings: removal orders concerned responsibility for poor relief, while apprenticeship agreements established a young person’s service under contractual terms. Parish officials had to collect testimony, find witnesses and preserve the documents needed when a second parish or an employer disputed an obligation. The vicar and churchwardens met people through baptisms, marriages, burials, church services and the management of church property. Overseers met them through poor relief, and the chapel trustees through land and rents.
Eleven Days Leave the Calendar, 1752
Parliament adopted a new calendar during George II’s reign, with consequences for every dated document in Britain. The Calendar Act directed that the legal year should begin on 1 January from 1752, replacing the older English legal practice of beginning the year on 25 March. It also brought the English calendar into line with the Gregorian reckoning used by many other European countries. The law required Wednesday 2 September 1752 to be followed by Thursday 14 September, omitting eleven numbered dates. For a Sussex farmer, tenant or tradesman, the change concerned rent days, contracts, age calculations, wages and the dating of accounts. Quarter days such as Lady Day and Michaelmas were central to the payment of rents and to the terms on which workers entered service. The legislation contained provisions intended to preserve the length of existing periods and the amounts due, so that the change in the printed date preserved the contractual length of tenancies and the agreed dates for payment. Clerks and attorneys who prepared deeds had to use the new commencement of the legal year.
The Church also changed its calculation of Easter and the movable feasts. New tables were prescribed for future editions of the Book of Common Prayer, and the familiar fixed festivals were assigned their corresponding dates in the revised calendar. At Wisborough Green and its dependent chapel the change reached ministers when they used the Prayer Book and dated entries, while the parish officers adopted the new system when preparing settlement papers, apprenticeships and rate records.
Marriage Records and Apprenticeship, 1753–1754
The House of Commons and Lords passed the Marriage Act in 1753, requiring more regular public procedures for most marriages in England and Wales from 25 March 1754. Lord Chancellor Hardwicke supported the measure to curb clandestine marriage, especially ceremonies performed without proper publicity or parental knowledge. Couples ordinarily had to have banns announced on three Sundays in a parish church or authorised chapel, or obtain a licence. A minister solemnised the marriage according to the prescribed requirements and entered the details in a register signed by the parties and witnesses.
The Act also regulated the marriage of people under twenty-one and preserved particular exemptions, including those for Quakers and Jews. Its requirements gave parish clergy and churchwardens new reasons to keep registers, banns and certificates carefully. Because Loxwood was a dependent chapel of Wisborough Green, the parish’s established marriage rights and the minister’s lawful authority were important to any couple arranging a wedding. A baptised child might be entered in a local register, while a marriage required the prescribed publication and ceremony at a place authorised for it.
On 18 July 1753 a Wisborough Green apprenticeship agreement named William Bason. This was another actual parish document produced within the period when Parliament was tightening the legal rules governing family relationships. Apprenticeships, poor-law settlement and marriages each affected which household or parish bore responsibilities for a person’s maintenance. An overseer seeking to establish a claimant’s legal settlement might need to examine records of service, parentage or marriage going back many years.
William Ashburnham Becomes Bishop of Chichester, 1754
Matthias Mawson left Chichester in 1754 to become Bishop of Ely. William Ashburnham was appointed to Chichester and began an exceptionally long episcopate which would last into the closing years of the eighteenth century. He took office as the new marriage rules entered use and as Sussex parishes were preparing registers and church papers under the new calendar. Ashburnham’s authority covered the appointment and discipline of clergy, church buildings and the acts performed by parish ministers within his diocese. Ashburnham’s appointment brought another bishop into the story of Wisborough Green and Loxwood. Bishops and their diocesan officers issued licences, conducted visitations and dealt with disputes over benefices and parish worship. The Loxwood chapel trustees had their own responsibilities for the endowed property, but a minister celebrating services there drew authority through the parish and diocese.
In Chichester, cathedral canons followed a daily pattern of services while also managing property, maintenance and the fabric of a medieval building repeatedly altered through the centuries. The newer eighteenth-century chamber organ installed above the Arundel screen around 1725 required skilled maintenance and musicians. Priests journeyed to the diocesan city for ordinations or official business, using roads that joined Chichester with the Downs and the northern Weald.
Parish Property and the Western Weald in the Mid-1750s
A West Sussex property record from 1755 names Charles Tribe, son of William Tribe, in dealings involving the Wisborough Green holding called Perryses. The deed dated 25 September connects the Tribe family with property also associated in local material with the Naldrett name. Earlier papers place William Tribe at Styfolds in Wisborough Green in 1749. The manor of Loxwood and Drungewick lay within a network of Onslow family property. A family able to hold several farms and houses could receive rents through agents, negotiate leases and deal with building repairs across more than one village. The road linking Loxwood with Alfold passed near older timber-framed houses and through fields separated by hedges, ditches and common land. Most traffic depended on horses, walkers and carts, with farmers often taking short local routes towards neighbours, mills or grazing as well as making longer journeys to the county towns. The distinction between a main road and an access track became especially important in winter. Water lay in ruts, steep approaches grew slippery and the clay around a broken surface could force carts to widen the passage across the margin of the lane. The River Lox presented a separate difficulty: its bridge was a fixed crossing for carts travelling between Brewhurst, the village and the roads southwards. Large estate owners, carriers and farmers had practical reasons to support the proposals that Parliament would consider in 1757.
Britain Returns to War, 1756
Fighting between Britain and France expanded during 1756 into the Seven Years’ War. Their disputes reached from Europe to North America, India and the seas that carried commerce between them. French and British forces contested forts and trading positions along the Ohio valley and in Canada, while European alliances committed armies to campaigns in Germany. George II was especially concerned for Hanover, whose position exposed his German electorate to French operations, and ministers had to consider how British resources could defend both the king’s continental interests and the overseas empire. War demanded money. Parliament voted supply, the Treasury borrowed, and the Navy ordered ships, sailors, victuals and stores. Taxation on land and goods contributed to the costs. Customs revenue depended upon the movement of imported merchandise through ports, while merchants who had lost ships or faced higher insurance charges altered prices and routes. Sussex ports handled coastal and Channel traffic within that national network, and inland farmers sold the food, fuel and animal products that passed through markets towards larger towns.
The condition of roads mattered in wartime as much as in peace. Commissioners and military suppliers needed reliable transport, yet so did farmers sending grain to mill, livestock to sale and timber to building sites. Across the Low Weald many older lanes had grown through repeated use by walkers, packhorses and drovers. Their line followed convenient ground and familiar crossings, sometimes bending around fields and ponds. A larger wheeled wagon demanded a road of more regular width, a better drained surface and bridges capable of taking a heavier load. The war also sharpened coastal preparations. Sussex justices, officers and landowners had to attend to instructions concerning men, horses and the defence of exposed approaches. The national question was whether France could land troops while Britain’s own forces fought abroad. The local question for an estate owner was how rapidly a messenger, cart or mounted party could travel over the distances between the Weald, Chichester and the coast.
Parliament Authorises the Guildford–Arundel Road, 1757
In 1757 Parliament passed an Act for repairing and widening the road from the north end of Dapdune Wharf, in the parish of Stoke-next-Guildford, through Guildford and Alfold to Alfold Bars, and then onwards to St Mary’s Gate at Arundel. The Act was passed in the thirtieth year of George II and gave trustees statutory powers to manage the roads, arrange improvements and collect tolls towards their expense. The proposal reached across Surrey and Sussex, connecting the River Wey navigation near Guildford with the roads through the Western Weald and the Arun valley. The route ran south from the Guildford district towards Alfold, crossed the county boundary at Alfold Bars and entered Sussex near Loxwood. It went through the village towards the River Lox crossing and New Pound Common, then by Newbridge, Pulborough and Bury towards Arundel. The scheme brought roads used by farmers, millers, drovers, carriers and travellers into a single parliamentary project. Roads serving separate estates and villages were now to be administered through trustees empowered to collect money from those using the improved route.
Arthur Onslow, Speaker of the House of Commons since 1728, headed the list of promoters recorded for the measure. Other supporters named in the local account included Lord George Lennox, Sir Cecil Bisshopp, Sir John Shelley, Sir Charles Goring, Walter Barttelott, John Hollist, John Napper, Denzil Onslow, Middleton Onslow and Lee Steer. The list also contained the mayor of Arundel, John King senior and junior, John Laker and John Napper of Paplins.
The promoters had different reasons to favour the road. Landowners wanted tenants and produce to reach market more reliably. Carriers could plan longer journeys if road repairs reduced deep ruts and flooded hollows. Mill owners depended upon deliveries of grain and the movement of meal, while cattle dealers needed a passable route for animals driven towards fairs and markets. Towns at either end of the scheme could benefit from trade passing through their streets, and the route from Dapdune Wharf gave access to the River Wey navigation linking Guildford with the Thames. The Act authorised a long scheme, and the traffic available on different stretches affected what the trustees could maintain. In time the road administration was divided into more manageable sections, including the important length between Alfold Bars and Newbridge.
The Turnpike Alters the Road through Loxwood
The road approaching Loxwood from Alfold had previously followed older droveways and local tracks across the heavy clay. Around Alfold, farms such as Gibbs Hatch and White’s lay among fields and woodland approached by lanes serving their tenants. The turnpike brought a more direct managed route through this agricultural ground. Near the Alfold approach the trustees established a toll point called Alfold Gate, controlling movement towards the Sussex boundary and creating a place where a collector, dwelling and barrier became associated with the public road. South of Alfold Bars the improved route crossed ground used by people travelling between the Surrey farms and the Loxwood settlement. Near Loxwood’s pond the alignment changed the way traffic approached older houses. The road was taken through ground which had served earlier premises and passed towards the chapel, then descended to the River Lox. A house and pond that had been reached by the drove road now faced a route intended for regular wagon and carriage traffic. Livestock needed water and room to pass, while loaded carts required steadier approaches than the old tracks afforded.
The river crossing was particularly important. A bridge had been recorded at Loxwood in the sixteenth century, and the track beside the farmhouse later called Bridge House provided a direct approach from the south. The turnpike entered this same short stretch of road, where carts and riders had to pass between the house, the river and the lane climbing into the village. Toll collection was organised just north of the bridge, beside the property later known as Toll Gate Cottage, with another toll point on the Alfold section.
Toll collectors received payments from chargeable traffic and kept accounts for the trustees. A gate and the keeper’s accommodation had to be placed where vehicles and animals could be seen approaching, while the road itself required regular attention to drainage, ruts, banks and bridges. Those travelling to market could now encounter an official charged with taking a toll on a route their families had used as a common highway. The trustees were expected to devote toll revenue to the work authorised by Parliament, paying the labourers and contractors who repaired the carriageway. The new road affected neighbouring buildings. Bridge House stood immediately beside the crossing where road users approached Loxwood. The older timber-framed cottages farther uphill occupied plots whose fronts and gardens were affected by the movement of the carriageway. Later records describe brick additions and road-facing alterations to some of these houses, while the eighteenth-century turnpike created the traffic and alignment to which later owners responded. At Brewhurst carts reached the mill and farm along Brewhurst Lane, crossing the separate 1672 stone bridge east of the main village road.
From Alfold Bars to Newbridge, Pulborough and Arundel
Beyond Loxwood the route crossed New Pound Common and approached Newbridge, carrying traffic towards the Arun valley. The Act’s wider destination was St Mary’s Gate at Arundel, reached by way of Pulborough and Bury. This brought the smaller Wealden farms into a corridor joining Guildford, the Sussex inland market roads and the great estate and river centre at Arundel. The route passed through places already linked by local movement, but responsibility for maintaining its principal stretches could now be placed in the hands of statutory trustees.
At Pulborough the road improvement involved cutting into Church Hill. An older house beside the church had stood level with the former route; the new carriageway passed lower, exposing foundations and requiring a retaining wall beside the steep descent. The cutting made the hill easier for horses pulling carts, while the low ground of the Arun valley presented its own problems of flooding and crossing. The work gives a concrete example of what turnpike improvement meant: labourers changed the actual ground on which people travelled and the relationship between the road and neighbouring buildings. The trustees’ work depended on the owners of roadside land. Widening a way could affect a field entrance, a ditch, a hedge or a garden, and road plans required decisions about compensation, disposal of redundant lengths and the siting of gates. The 1757 legislation allowed land associated with portions of the old road to be dealt with when the route was changed. Landowners, attorneys and surveyors had reasons to attend trust meetings or examine the new lines of road shown in plans.
For the farmer driving cattle from the Loxwood district, a better road could make a journey towards Pulborough or Arundel more practicable in wet weather, while tolls added a charge to the trip. The same calculation applied to carriers moving grain, timber, cloth or imported goods. A road improvement could save time and animal strength, yet a trader needed sufficient sales to meet the cost of using it. Rates, exemptions and practical enforcement became part of the business of the toll trustees.
The Militia Act and Clive’s Victory in India, 1757
Parliament passed another major measure in 1757 to reorganise the county militia. The legislation provided procedures for raising men through local arrangements, including parish lists, ballots and the appointment of officers under county authority. The government wanted a home defence force while regular troops served overseas or on continental campaigns. Implementing the law depended upon local gentry, lord lieutenants, magistrates and the men who could be required to serve or supply substitutes.
Sussex had difficulty meeting the requirements of the new scheme and incurred penalties for failing to raise the force expected. The law nevertheless placed the prospect of selection for military service within the duties of local officers and the wider debates heard by county landowners. The same men who promoted road improvements and sat as justices were engaged in questions about defence, taxation and obedience to statutory powers. A parish list could bring the national demand for soldiers to the attention of households whose ordinary work depended on keeping enough able-bodied labourers at home.
Events overseas also changed the scale of British warfare. On 23 June 1757 Robert Clive and forces serving the East India Company defeated the Nawab of Bengal at Plassey. The company gained an increasingly powerful position in Bengal politics and revenue, using military force and agreements with local rulers. The Bengal campaign belonged to a trading system that brought Indian textiles and other goods into British commerce. Profits, corruption and the company’s influence became political questions in Britain, while British fortunes were being enlarged in ways that also imposed severe burdens on people living under company power.
The Victories of 1759 and the Cost of War
British forces achieved a series of victories in 1759. On 1 August an allied army including British troops defeated the French at Minden in Germany. During the summer the Royal Navy won battles near Lagos and off the French coast, reducing the chance that French warships could protect an invasion fleet. The struggle for Canada produced another decisive event on 13 September, when General James Wolfe’s force defeated the French army outside Quebec. Wolfe died during the fighting, and the British occupied the city. On 20 November Admiral Sir Edward Hawke attacked the French fleet at Quiberon Bay and won a victory in dangerous coastal waters. The battle severely damaged French naval power at a time when ministers feared a French attempt to land troops in Britain. George II received news from separate theatres of war, and William Pitt, a central minister in the conduct of the conflict, acquired a growing public reputation. Newspapers, sermons and celebratory prints carried the reports to towns whose inhabitants also paid the taxes supporting fleets and armies.
The expense was considerable. Parliament authorised borrowing and revenue measures, the Navy purchased materials and provisions, and suppliers contracted to provide food for soldiers and sailors. Sussex grain dealers, timber merchants and carriers belonged to the domestic economy within which the government raised and spent that money. The improved route through Loxwood had opened a more direct corridor between the Weald and the markets and waterways at either end of the Guildford–Arundel scheme. Chichester Cathedral also underwent decorative work in 1759, when the figures of kings and bishops in the building were repainted. Craftsmen worked within a medieval church whose canons and officers administered an eighteenth-century institution, while the bishop’s officials dealt with rural clergy. Outside the city another group of men was preparing to renew the legal ownership of Loxwood chapel property.
The Loxwood Chapel Trust Is Renewed Again, 1759
In 1759 the chapel property at Loxwood passed through another recorded renewal of trustees. From the men appointed in 1730, the remaining legal holders named in the research were John Layker of Loxwood, described as a gentleman, John King of Greathouse, also a gentleman, and John Napper of Papelings, a yeoman connected with Wisborough Green. Their names carried the title forward to a further group of trustees. The conveyance brought fresh members of several local families into formal responsibility for the land and income supporting St John the Baptist’s chapel. The renewed list included members of the Onslow family: Middleton Onslow, Richard Onslow and Denzil Onslow of Drungewick. Other names came from the King family, including John King and Ffielder King; from the Napper family, including Henry Napper of Cranleigh, a surgeon, Henry Napper of Loxwood, Thomas Napper, Matthew Napper and members associated with Highes in Rudgwick; and from John Pay’s family at Kirdford. The list joined men with land, professional work and family connections across the boundary between Sussex and Surrey.
The Seward family also appears extensively in the research list. John Seward the elder of Loxwood was a yeoman; Richard, Thomas, William, Bridger and Samuel Seward were named among his family connections. Brewhurst had been occupied by John Seward during the middle years of George II’s reign, and the family was associated with the holding through Richard Pay’s ownership. The trustee renewal gives the family a second documentary connection with Loxwood, this time through the endowed property of the chapel.
Other men named included the surgeon Edward Harbroe of Rudgwick and his namesake son, John Butler of Wisborough Green, William Tribe and Charles Tribe. The Tribe family’s names occur independently in the property papers for Styfolds and Perryses in 1749 and 1755. The trustee lists join men identified through their houses and estates with others known through occupations or family descent. They also show the importance of repeated names: John King, John Napper and Henry Napper could belong to different generations or separate branches and required an occupation or residence to distinguish them in a deed. The chapel’s houses, plots and rents had to be held in the names of living trustees who could deal with legal ownership. A group drawn from neighbouring parishes could witness transactions, appoint replacements and preserve the documents used when a lease or boundary was questioned.
George II Dies and George III Inherits, October 1760
George II died at Kensington Palace on 25 October 1760, aged seventy-six. He had outlived Queen Caroline and his eldest son Frederick, Prince of Wales. The crown passed to Frederick’s son, the twenty-two-year-old George III, who had been the heir since 1751. The new king inherited an expensive war against France, a strong parliamentary system and ministers whose offices had developed during the two preceding Hanoverian reigns. William Ashburnham was Bishop of Chichester when the succession occurred. The 1759 chapel trustees had recently taken title to Loxwood’s endowed property, and the Seward family occupied Brewhurst after the enlargement of its farmhouse around 1750. The road authorised in 1757 now passed through the village towards the River Lox crossing and south through Newbridge and Pulborough. Arthur Onslow had presided over the Commons for more than thirty years and would sit as Speaker into the opening months of George III’s reign.
The Seven Years’ War had further campaigns to come. George III and his ministers would make new decisions about the war, parliamentary taxation and peace while carriers and farmers used the turnpike through Loxwood. The new king entered his first winter with the Seven Years’ War unfinished and with the Guildford–Arundel road trustees responsible for maintaining the highway through Loxwood.