Turnworth 1747

Whipping boys at Rogationtide perambulations

There is a great deal of evidence of how people lived and played in records, sometimes in surprising places. It is always good practise to view the original documents rather that transcriptions by Ancestry etc. You never know what you will find. Often the vicar made comments on people or occasions which provide evidence of the goings on.

In many rural parishes it was traditional, and had been for many centuries, for villagers to ensure that their parish boundaries were marked out so that disputes over land could be avoided. In the days before maps this was done by walking or processing around the boundary. The church became involved and made this a festival by carrying a cross and banners and feasting and drinking at some points of the circuit. In order for people to remember since ‘time out of mind’ in some parishes some boys were taken along and whipped at certain points so that would remember forever. They were rewarded with food or money. Evidence for this is thin on the ground, but as late as 1747, long after the Reformation, it was still taking place.

In the parish register of Turnworth, Dorset, not far from Milton Abbas there is an revealing entry –

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Transcription Bryan Phillips:

‘Memorandum This year on Ascension day 1747. after morning prayer at Turnworth Church, was made a publick Perambulation of the bounds of the parish of Turnworth, by one Richd. Cobbe, vicar, Wm. Northover, churchwarden, Henry Sillers and Richard Mullen, overseers, and others, with 4 boys ; beginning at the Church Hatch and cutting a great T on the most principal parts of the bounds. Whipping the boys by way of remembrance, and stopping their cry with some half -pence ; we returned to church again, which Perambulation and Possessioning [Processioning] had not been made for 20 years last past.’

None of the Milton Abbas records mention whipping boys during perambulations, but that is not to say it was not done here too.