History of corn milling .. - Centrostudirpinia.it

PREFACE.
The short histories of mills comprising this concluding
volume are intended to illustrate the actual operation of the
various laws and customs already recited in detail. They
recount how, in accordance with those laws and customs,
milling soke in each district was locally created by the
superior lord how it was ; maintained, by his heirs or
with considerable trouble to themselves and much
assigns,
anxiety to the public ; and how, finally, with the march of
the times the force of popular hostility gradually overcame
and extinguished it. This was the general fate of milling
soke throughout the country, though in some few instances,
as related in a previous volume, the ancient privileges
had been preserved even down to the present century,
and were only abolished at last by public purchase. It
will be remembered that, as no general statute law had
created soke, so no law at one stroke abolished it throughout
the kingdom. Thus each district was thrown entirely
upon its own resources to obtain relief from what, once
a valuable boon, had become an intolerable yoke on the
people and an impolitic hindrance to industrial and
commercial progress.
Histories of corn mills constitute a somewhat novel
branch of archaeology. But since the issue of the first
volume of this work, various local antiquaries have shown
that it is an interesting and fruitful one ; an excellent
illustration of what may be done in this direction being
afforded by a history of certain ancient mills at Glasgow,
written by their owner, a practical miller, Mr. James White,
F.S.A. (Scotland).*
This volume, the scheme of which was draughted in
collaboration with Mr. Richard Bennett, has been written
* The Lands and Mills of Partick. Read before the Scottish Association, December