proprietor had to his land.  For this reason, in the old Catholic times, after they had escaped from villenage by running away and remaining absent from their hundred for a year and a day, dwelling for that period in a walled town, these people were amongst the most diligent attendants at the Abbey doors, and when the Abbeys were dissolved, were, no doubt, amongst the most daring of these thieves, vagabonds, and sturdy rogues, who, after the Robin Hood fashion, beset the highways and solitary farms of England, and claimed their black mail in a very unceremonious style.  It was out of this class that Henry VIII. hanged his seventy-two thousand during his reign, and, as it is said, without appearing materially to diminish their number.

That they continued to “increase, multiply, and replenish the earth,” overflowing all bounds, overpowering by mere populousness all the severe laws against them of whipping, burning in the hand, in the forehead or in the breast, and hanging, and filling the whole country with alarm, is evident by the very act itself of Elizabeth.

Amongst these hereditary paupers who, as we have said, were found in Stockington, there was a family of the name of Deg.  This family had never failed to demand and enjoy what it held to be its share of its ancient inheritance.  It appeared from the parish records, that they had practiced in different periods the crafts of shoemaking, tailoring, and chimney-sweeping; but since the invention of the stocking-frame, they had, one and all of them, followed the profession of stocking weavers, or as they were there called, stockingers.  This was a trade which required no extreme exertion of the physical or intellectual powers.  To sit in a frame, and throw the arms to and fro, was a thing that might either be carried to a degree of extreme diligence, or be let down into a mere apology for idleness.  An “idle stockinger” was there no very uncommon phrase, and the Degs were always classed under that head.  Nothing could be more admirably adapted than this trade for building a plan of parish relief upon.  The Degs did not pretend to be absolutely without work, or the parish authorities would soon have set them to some real labor,—­a thing that they particularly recoiled from, having a very old adage in the family, that “hard work was enough to kill a man.”  The Degs were seldom, therefore out of work, but they did not get enough to meet and tie.  They had but little work if the times were bad, and if they were good, they had large families, and sickly wives or children.  Be times what they would, therefore, the Degs were due and successful attendants at the parish pay-table.  Nay, so much was this a matter of course, that they came at length not even trouble themselves to receive their pay, but sent their young children for it; and it was duly paid.  Did any parish officer, indeed, turn restive, and decline to pay a Deg, he soon found himself summoned before a magistrate, and such pleas of sickness, want of work, and poor earnings brought up, that he most likely got a sharp rebuke from the benevolent but uninquiring magistrate, and acquired a character for hard-heartedness that stuck to him.