forest land, lying mainly between Draycott Cliff and Yoxall, both in Staffordshire.
Mr. John Wright, who for ten years prior to 1877, was resident in Scropton village and an overseer of the parish, gave me the reason for this irregularity as he had learnt it from "a very old Scropton farmer, William Shipton, whose family had been freeholders there for generations." Another member of the family lived at Yoxall in Staffs, and actually on one of the above-mentioned patches of land which belonged to Scropton parish.[1]
The tradition ran as follows: When Oliver Cromwell destroyed Tutbury Castle the Scropton people rang their church bells. This so pleased Cromwell that he gave to every freeholder a piece of land in Needwood Forest.
Now, it was certainly not book-learning which prompted Mr. Shipton. Any book to which this Derbyshire yeoman and his circle were at all likely to have had access would have informed him of the Enclosure Act of 1801 and its effect on parochial divisions. Was his story then an ingenious piece of guesswork by way of explanation of these distant and isolated patches? It might be thought so, but it is possible to show that this tradition is deeply rooted in past local history.
In the first place, there is the fact that Tutbury was destroyed by the Parliamentarian army in the Civil War. Scropton Church is distant about a mile and a half, and although there is no proof that the bells were rung in celebration of the Royalist defeat, it is far from unlikely.[2] Further, we have the important historical fact that in 1654 Cromwell issued an ordinance which in effect provided that the forest of Needwood should be sold "for the satisfaction of the soldiery."[3]
- ↑ It is interesting to notice that the Muster Roll of 1539 for Yoxall bears the name of "Hew Shypton, able man with byll."
- ↑ Churchwardens' accounts may be available to elucidate this point.
- ↑ The evidence for this is a contemporary petition quoted in Shaw's Staffordshire, 1798—a rare history, which is in few but collectors' libraries.
