Extracts of Edwin Odgers report:
THE rolls which form the subject of the present brief memoir contain certain annual statements of receipts and expenditure made by an officer called, in the earliest instance, the Receiver of the Commonalty of the Town of Bridgwater ;: and later, the Bailiff of the Commonalty, the Common Bailiff or simply the Bailiff, Probably the office thus designated was the usual stepping-stone to the position of Mayor, or Portreeve (as it was in the earlier days) of our ancient borough. The collection to which my remarks have reference consists of seventeen of such yearly accounts ; the sequence is rather broken, as may be seen from the fact that they range from the 47th year of Edward III (1372) to the 6th and 7th of Edward IV (1466-7). We have thus specimens of annual expenditure taken at random over a period of nearly a century.
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Edwin Odgers mentions of the town maces, income from rents, expenditure on tenement, crane and bridge maintenance, wine and other items for hospitality and quite a lot more.
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It was my intention to make some further remarks upon the language of these documents ; but examples enough have been given to show the precarious manner in. which the common bailiff, or rather the professional gentleman who received 3s. 4d for writing his “parcelles,” balanced himself between Latin and the vernacular. The difficulty of maintaining a pure style under the circumstances must be admitted; and when a Cambridge bursar writes “Pro corda ad le whippe 1d”6 it is no wonder that a contemporary burgess of Bridgwater should account “pro gravellynge le viam a fonte usque ad keyam,” and “ pro dimidio mille de lathnaille,” It must however be confessed that our notary reaches a lower level when he speaks of the common ditch without the West Gate as “sine occidentalem portam!”
These documents give us but little information as to contemporary English speech. A few curious or obsolete words have been noted in the foregoing extracts, and the list might be slightly extended. We have traces of a Somersetshire tongue in the spellings burge, axith,happse, paselles, &c
Originally published in Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, volume 23 for 1877.