History of corn milling .. - Centrostudirpinia.it

SOME FEUDAL MILLS. 173
assigns (inhabitants of the said messuage), shall and will, during the IV.
term hereby granted, grind or cause to be ground all his KING'S
malt, corn, MILLS,
or grain which shall be used in or for the respective family or ^^^^^RPOOL.
families of the said R. Bibby, his executors, administrators, and ]g^ Townsend
assigns (inhabitants of the said messuage for the time being), at Windmill
some mill or mills of the said Sir John Moore or of his heirs and Tenants'*
assigns, being within three miles of the said hereby leased messuage ; Leases.
and in default thereof yielding and paying—and the said R. Bibby
doth for himself, his executors, administrators, and assigns, covenant
with the said Sir John Moore, his heirs and assigns, that he the said
R. Bibby, his executors, administrators, or assigns (inhabitants of
the said messuage), shall and will yield and pay to the said Sir John
Moore, his heirs and assigns — for every Winchester bushel of corn
or grain which the said R. Bibby, his executors, administrators, or
assigns (inhabitants of the said messuage for the time being), shall
grind or cause to be ground elsewhere than at such the mill or mills
of the said Sir John Moore, his heirs or assigns, the sum of two
shillings and sixpence, and so proportionately for a greater or lesser
quantity ; and that within ten days after such default shall be made
in grindmg at such mill or mills as aforesaid.*
There was, therefore, nothing of*' MachlavelHan hard,
"
astute, cunning selfishness in Moore's framing of
leases ; and Picton's ill-judged censure is singularly
out of place. Moore's anxiety that his son should make
the most of his legal rights at the mills— the horse-
*'
mill, God bless it ! a thing of great concernment
to your estate," and Townsend mill, " the king's mill,
"— your ancestors built it is very keen, and, viewing
his circumstances, somewhat ; pathetic yet, save in
one instance to be noted, he advises neither injustice
nor illegality, nor ever steps out of the well-beaten
legal track of centuries of millowners before him.f
The one cardinal sin of Moore as a miller and
a burgess —due to the illegal withdrawal of his
* As late as 1814 the Earl of Sefton's legal advisers pursued the same course ;
stipulating in a lease of land at Sefton to Robert Birch and his heirs that under
a penalty they "shall and will grind and shell all their grain at Sefton Mill."
This, a watermill beside the churchyard, an ancient establishment near the
early seat of the Molyneux family, still remains, and is worked by a descendant
of the above Robert Birch.
t This, the first attempted appreciation of the character of Sir Edward Text, ante, p. 125.
Moore, outlined in the paper already mentioned, read before the Lancashire and
Cheshire Historic Society in March 1896, has since been followed by Mr. W. F. Liverpool temp.
Irvine in an introduction to his reprint of the Rent. I', and future investigations on Charles IL (1899).
the same theme will, it is believed, place the character of Moore in a very different
aspect than that in which Heywood and Picton chose to depict it.