Catalogue description Lease fr. feof. (DR429/227) and chw. (DR429/223) to Will. Heyward, weaver, of a tenement...

Lease fr. feof. (DR429/227) and chw. (DR429/223) to Will. Heyward, weaver, of a tenement in West Orchard, late in occupation of Joh. Jeffry for 21 years, at 18s. rent.

Sign. and seal of Will. Hayward. Witn., Joh. (?) Hayward, Sim. Bur Burton. (Date here uncertain, as error crept in, and chw. names are those of 1669-70. Endorsement says lease ends 1692.)

The following deeds (DR429/235,236) show the church authorities mortgaging the property in return for money down, so great was the financial embarrassment into which they had fallen owing to the collapse of the spire in 1666. One of the lenders who relieved their necessities was Rev. Nathaniel Wanley, vicar of the church, and author of the curious work called "Wonders of the Little World," which so impressed the poet Browning. Wanley succeeded to the living in 1662, after the removal of Dr. Bryan for Noncomformity. The City Council voted him the sum of £10 when he presented them with a copy of his work, the Drapers Company gave him £6, and the Mercers £4. He married a daughter of the Town Clerk, Humphrey Burton and their son Humphrey was librarian of the Earl of Oxford, owner of the famous collection of Harelian MSS., now in the British Museum. Thomas King (DR429/238), mayor in 1671, a wealthy Tory brewer, brought water from Radford for use for his trade. The ministers' due and the hearth-tax (DR429/232) were unpopular forms of assessment, one parochial and one national; the former, which owed its origin to the Act of 4 Philip and Mary, persisted under the form of the Vicar's Rate almost to our own day; the latter, which was levied according to the number of hearths in each man's dwelling, fell into disfavour and was soon abandoned. A contemporary list of the inhabitants of Warwickshire and their payments according to this method of taxation now exists in the office of the Clerk of the Peace at Warwick, forming a valuable indication of the economic condition of the people at that period.