File:Wessex (1906) (14592464670).jpg

Identifier: wessex00hollrich (find matches)
Title: Wessex
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Holland, Clive, 1866- Tyndale, Walter, 1855-1943
Subjects: Dorset (England) -- Description and travel
Publisher: London : Adam & Charles Black
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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year 1842, when the authoritiesof the Duchy refused any longer to entertain theapplications from the copyholders for renewing of lives.By the custom referred to, each copyholder held hisland on three lives, and when the death of one of themoccurred, it was the practice to go to the next manorand ask permission to insert another persons name.Usually this request was granted on payment of a fine,varying in amount according to the size of the holding.This system of tenure has been referred to by MrThomas Hardy in his incomparable pictures of Wessexlife and Wessex customs, and so long as it lastedthe system proved a link connecting the Dorchesterand Fordington of to-day with those of feudal andmediaeval times. In the olden days, when a public execution at thegaol might be looked for to occasionally provide excite-ment for the inhabitants, it used to be the custom formany to journey town wards from the country roundfor no other purpose than to see the unhappy criminal 178 PUDDLETOWN CHURCH
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Thomas Hardy executed. In connection with these public executions,and as showing how general it was for all classes toregard the event with interest, and even as a sort ofentertainment, the following anecdote may be quoted. When a boy, Thomas Hardy—afterwards destinedto become one of Dorchesters most distinguished in-habitants—used to come into the town to school, and atan assize of this date a woman was tried for the murderof her husband at a village near. The husband was adissipated scoundrel, who treated her cruelly and abom-inably. She was from all accounts a good-looking andkindly woman ; but one day, discovering her husband,who was unfaithful to her, under circumstances of gravesuspicion, her anger was so aroused that she stabbed himfatally. After trial and conviction, she was condemnedto death, and young Hardy, with a companion, witnessedthe execution from the branches of a tree overlookingthe gaol-front, on which the gallows was placed. The two boys appear to have scarcely

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