History of corn milling .. - Centrostudirpinia.it

SOME FEUDAL MILLS. 97
years at this time of the year : And now doth run over all the middle HI.
part of the same causey, where of late the breadth was in great ^^ MILLS,
abundance, but from that part upward towards the fulling mills the
CHESTER.
causey doth lie bare and without any water running over, because 18. A Severe
it is and hath been ever in our memories the higher part of the Winter 1607
causey : Neither can any of us ever think or remember that any
part of the said causey hath been raised or enhanced either by
Mr. Gamull or any of the Goodmans or any other that were owners
thereof, we being all of us near neighbours, and have known the
same some of us this sixty years and all of us above forty years.
All which we will be ready to testify upon our oaths as any occasion
shall require. As witnesseth our hands subscribed this first day of
January 1607.
Richard Hassenhall, of Handbridge, aged 82 years.
Christopher Pemberton, of the same, aged 64 years.
Thos. Ffletcher, glover, dwelling on the bridge, aged 60 years.
Otes Conelowe, beer brewer, aged 60 years or thereabouts.
Thos, Dannatt, glover, aged 60 years or thereabouts.
Edwd. Gill, glover, aged 80 years or thereabouts.
Edwd. Dalbye, glasior, aged 64 years.
At this juncture, also, the severe frost of the winter of
1606-7— **a greate frost that continued from Michaelmas
to the middest of — February" was adroitly enlisted
in his cause by the astute Gamull. For miles round
the small rural mills were frozen into silence ; Dee
Mills the while, as though with supreme indifference
to the icy grip of winter, were grinding grist busily
and noisily as ever for all comers from the frost-bound
city and countryside. A more valuable testimony to
the public benefits of the king's mills it were impossible
to produce ; and Gamull did not fail to record
it by depositions on behalf of his much-maligned
establishment :—
Memo. That upon the xij daye of January they whose names Had. MSS.,
bee subscribed, having beene upon occasion at Wrixham, in theyr 2083. 6oo^
returne they came by Sir Richard Trevor his milles at Morford, being
in the highe waie side and aboute iiij miles from Chester : And
because they saw the said milles standing still and not grynding,
Richard Prymatt, one of theym who subscribes, tooke occason to
questyon with the millner of the sayde
milles and asked him the
cause wherefore they wroughte not. Who answered him that all
the saide milles (being iiij in number) had not wroughte for 5 or 6
dales then past ; And the cause thereof was the froste. Then the
said Richard Prymatt asked him wherefore they could not have
broken and thawed the froste by some devise or meanes. Who
VOL. IV. G