History of corn milling .. - Centrostudirpinia.it

SOME FEUDAL MILLS.
also in order to ; pull the same down." Two years ,^^^,^jy-
•
1
/->w 1 1 1 11 later it Was " Ordered that the leasehold interest Liverpool.
'
183
111- KING S MILLS,
in the mill commonly called Townsend Mill and the 23. Townsend
houses and premises there, belonging to Alderman Windmill.
Rigby, be purchased by this corporation at the price of
;^300, on this condition only, that the corporation shall
be able to purchase at such price as they shall think
right to give the reversion of all the said premises
from the Earl of Derby, in order that the nuisance
may be removed and the premises laid to the highways
there for the benefit of the town." Finally, in
1780 it was agreed that
'*
this corporation do purchase
the reversion of the site of a mill, cottages and
waste land adjoining, at the east end of Dale Street,
at the top of Shaw's Brow, from Lord Derby for
;^30o." Shortly after, " the nuisance," rich in associations
with venerable antiquity, was destroyed ; the
;^6oo paid by the corporation in respect of its site
and trade being the only payment ever made or ex-
in connection
pense ever incurred by the corporation
with the extinction of the milling soke of Liverpool.*
^^1^780^^°"*
*
Apparently the term "Nuisance" was applied to the mill because of the
danger apprehended from its sails revolving close to the highway. Edward I., at
Winchester, narrowly escaped death on one occasion, by his horse being frightened
by the sails of a windmill—
strepitum ventrincolae. A modern instance in
Leyland MSS.,
point is amusing : — "An indictment was tried at Huntingdon which excited no i. i8i.
small degree ot pleasantry in the county. A clergyman indicted a miller for
working his mill so near the common highway as to endanger life. The clergyman
is a man of considerable property and consequence in the county. He was obliged
daily to pass by this road on horseback, and had been several times thrown by his Annual Register,
horse taking fright at the sails of the mill. The mill was an old one which had
July i8, 1807
formerly stood on a common, but the latter had been enclosed by the Commis- (402).
sioners under the Inclosure Act, who had directed the new highway to be so
placed that it passed close under the fly of the mill. Mr. Justice Grose, addressing
the jury, said the mill as it now stood was unquestionably a nuisance, and the
miller must be found guilty. It was, however, no fault of his. The Commissioners
who directed the road to be set out were most to blame, and he regretted
they had not been made parties to the indictment. Neither was the prosecutor to
blame in preferring the mdictment : he could go by no other road, and his life
as well as those of his
fellow-subjects was endangered. Under such circumstances
he felt wholly at a loss how to act. The miller ought not to be punished ; yet the
safety of the prosecutor and the public must be consulted. He thought the best way
and the miller
of deciding would be to direct the prosecutor to pay the miller £^0 ;
to abate the nuisance, with leave to erect his mill on some convenient spot adjoining.
This was accordingly made the decision of the Court "—apparently with the
ready assent, if not at the suggestion, ot the good-natured and well-to-do prosecutor.