The History of Myddleorder this book
Richard Gough
Price £40.00 hardback

"Gough's History of Myddle . . . sounds like the narrowest kind of parish-pump history one could possibly imagine, of interest only to devoted local historians in Shropshire. It is in fact a unique book. It gives us a picture of seventeenth-century England in all its wonderful and varied detail such as no other book that I know even remotely approaches. If History is, as has once been said, the men and women of the past talking and we overhearing their conversations, then Gough's history of his native parish, written between the years 1700 and 1706, is History . . . A whole countryside, an entire society, comes alive in our minds, in a way that no historian, however skilled, can possibly evoke . . . this remarkable book is . . . one of the most entertaining books ever written in English, unique in our literature."
Professor W G Hoskins

"It is impossible to do justice to this book . . . almost every paragraph is pure gold. It is a minor classic shamefully neglected."
J P Kenyon, The Observer

"A gem. . . a picture straight out of Chaucer."
Daily Telegraph

This book is one of the great neglected classics of English historical literature. Written between the years 1700 and 1706, Richard Gough's delightful history of Myddle in Shropshire is a rare biographical profile of a complete village during the seventeenth century. Gough wrote the stories of the people living in the village, based on his own personal experience and observation, spanning the period fromn the civil war up to the beginning of the eighteenth century. The present edition is introduced by Dr Peter Razzell, with a text which has been edited and modernized so as to eliminate material of purely antiquarian interest. This newly-set edition should be of interest to social historians, sociologists, the general reading public, and anyone interested in "the world we have lost".

From Chapter 7, "She Went Daily to the Ale-house":

"Thomas Hayward the second was a handsome gentleman, a good country scholar and a pretty clerk. He was a person well reputed in his country and of a general acquaintance. He was just and faithful in affirming or denying any matter in controversy, so that less credit was given to some men's oath than to his bare word. He was well skilled in the art of good husbandry. His father left him a farm of thirty pounds (fee simple) In Newton-on-the-Hill and the lease of this farm in Balderton. He had eight pounds (land in fee simple) left him by an uncle in Whixhall. He married with Alice, the daughter of Mr. Wihen, high school master, in Shrews- bury. He had a good fortune with her in money, besides houses In town of considerable yearly value. She was a comely woman, but highly bred and unfit for a country life, besides she was shrewd with tongue, so that they lived unquietly and uncomfortably, and their estate consumed insensibly.

"He had little quietness at home which caused him to frequent public houses merely for his natural sustenance, and there meeting with company and being generally well beloved he stayed often too long. His Intimate friend was Mr. Hotchkins of Webscott, and Indeed there seemed to be a natural sympathy between them for they were both of them very just honest persons and well beloved - but their deportment when they were in drink was very different for Mr. Hodgkins could go but not speak, and Mr. Hayward could speak as well and seemed to be more acute and witty In his drink then at other times but could not go.

"This Thomas Hayward sold and consumed all his estate and was afterwards maintained on charity by his eldest son."

ISBN 0904573141. Hardback, 184 pages.

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