1700s

Formal recognition of Lowestoft’s status as a trading port might never have been given in 1679, had the town not managed to free itself from Great Yarmouth’s claim to control all maritime traffic in local waters – especially that connected with the herring trade. Articles relating to this long-running and contentious issue are to be found elsewhere in LO&N’s History pages (The Lothingland-Lowestoft-GreatYarnouth Disputes (Parts 1 & 2) and a summative comment can be added to this.

Robert Reeve (local lawyer), who lived at what is now No. 49 High Street and who had his office next door at No. 48, was steward of the Lowestoft manor during the late 18th and early 19th century. Among the many things he did, connected with the history of the town (and also with that of Lothingland Half-hundred) was to compile a four-volume, handwritten account of various aspects of their past, connected with manorial and parochial matters of all kinds. Dated at c.

Quarter Sessions Punishment (Lowestoft)

With so much material being available for study of misdemeanour and nuisance (as shown elsewhere in these LO&N pages, in Manorial Governance), the ability to assess the degree of felony among Lowestoft’s inhabitants is made a great deal more difficult by fewer records and by the difficulty of accessing those that do exist.

The Governors and Governed in Early Modern Times

In the absence of research relating to felony, and with ecclesiastical court records left largely unexplored, the leet court business in Lowestoft (see Manorial Governance) will be used as indicator of attitudes towards the regulation of local society. There were two differing views of the role of the Law current in pre-industrial England, expressed by James Sharpe in Crime in Early Modern England, 1550-1750 (1984), p. 143.

Serious crime, or felony (consisting of treason, murder, assault resulting in serious injury, witchcraft, highway robbery, arson, burglary, rape, grand arceny, forgery, counterfeiting and smuggling) was largely dealt with during the Early Modern period at the six-monthly assizes, held usually in the county towns of the realm. Though some of the offences named, if deemed to have been of a lesser level of seriousness (mainly, matters of assault – including rape – and damage to property), were handled at the three-monthly quarter sessions.

Mid-16th to Mid-18th Century

The Manorial System served both as the foundation of land ownership and management and of maintaining the peace and good order of each local community. It had its origins in  Early Medieval times (what was formerly known as the Anglo-Saxon period) and was further shaped and developed following the Norman Conquest – which is now taken as being the start of the Late Medieval era.

The one thing missing from F.A. Crisp’s printed versions of the Lowestoft Parish Registers (1902) is any reference to the baptisms or burials of any infants born out of wedlock. Yet, such entries are there from the very first year of the first surviving register book: 1561. The best guess as to why this is so is probably to be found in attitudes of the time regarding illegitimacy being widely seen as a social disgrace, together with the more practical matter of who was to be responsible for the raising of the child – if it survived.

When Elizabeth I acceded to the English throne in November 1558, she had a number of problems facing her – not the least of which was the matter of what the country’s official brand of the Christian Faith was to be and what form it was to take.

Annot’s Free Grammar School

The single most important event in the process of public education in Lowestoft during the early modern period came in June 1570, when Thomas Annot (merchant) founded a free grammar school. A summary of the original deed of gift is to be found in the Rev. John Arrow’s Memorandum Book (he was Lowestoft’s parish priest, 1760-89) – Norfolk Record Office - PD 589/92, pp. 13-14. And it is also present in Edmund Gillingwater’s An Historical Account of the Ancient Town of Lowestoft (1790), p. 299.

Among the many interesting features to emerge from close study of the 507 wills and 100 probate inventories which have survived for the period indicated in the title are the rates of literacy able to be determined in the various occupational groups which formed the town’s socio-economic structure. Even today, there would probably be argument (or at least discussion) among specialists in the field as to what literacy means. The same holds true for historians.