State of Oregon Law Library Legal Research Blog

Wandering items return

Illustration under the term "day-net" in the Dictionarium Rusticum

The first item is a 1726 dictionary entitled Dictionarium rusticum, urbanicum & botanicum: or, a dictionary of husbandry, gardening, trade, commerce and all sorts of country-affairs.  Perhaps it seems odd that SOLL would own a dictionary on “husbandry and gardening,” but it fits in very well with an older law library like ours. Most common-place English dictionaries wouldn't contain terms from specific industries, and it was important to make sure that any words used in legal documents relating to agricultural, land deeds, and farm labor contracts were used correctly.

The book was originally published in 1669 without an author but has been attributed to either Nathan Bailey or John Worlidge, or both working together. Bailey was an English lexicographer who authored several works, his greatest was the Universal etymological dictionary, which was the most popular English dictionary in the 18^th century and went through some 30 editions between 1721 and 1802. Bailey was a pioneer of lexicography and changed the scope of modern-day dictionaries—before the early 1700s, English dictionaries only focused on difficult or obscure words. Bailey, along with a few others, broadened that scope to include more commonplace words, slang, specialized jargon, and dialects. John Worlidge (sometimes spelled Woolridge) was an English agriculturalist, who compiled the first systematic treatise on husbandry and was the first to write about farming as an industry. The dictionary was published as a companion to Worlidge's first work on agriculture, the 1668 Systema Agriculturae, or the Mystery of husbandry discovered. 

The second item was an indenture on vellum paper, which is dated circa 1701 and was a labor contract between William Provis of Shepton-Mallet, Somerset, England and John Poole of Chilton Polden, Somerset, England. Here in the U.S., this contract of labor is the type of indenture we are more familiar with, like indentured servants in colonial history. However, the term refers to legal contracts between two or more parties that can also apply to land, with mortgages or the temporary use of outbuildings or fields being types of indenture. The term arose as the early contracts were written in duplicate, triplicate or quadripartite, depending on the number of parties, on the same large sheet of paper. The copies were then separated by cutting a waving or jagged notched line (the Middle English term “endenter” meant toothed because of this jagged edge). Each party then had a copy of the contract and the cut pattern would be used to verify authenticity. 

Close-up of the indenture between William Provis and John Poole

The town of Shepton-Mallet was a small village with a population of about 500 at the time near the Bristol channel; this area in England known for its limestone quarries, ​as well as the wool and cloth trade. William Provis’ profession is noted as a clothier (or clothes merchant). The Provis family was a prominent merchant family in the region, with two members serving as the High Sheriff of Somerset, and extensive landowners, with a residence in the exclusive upper-class Royal Crescent neighborhood of Bath, England. 

The contract has Provis buying the contents of a "cottage" for the sum of what appears to be 4 shillings from John Poole. We have been less successful in identifying further information about Poole, but he appears to have been a weaver.

Buying a cottage referred to a merchant employing workers by supplying the raw fiber to a group (usually one family working from their home) and sometimes supplying the looms to them as well, and then the spinners and weavers turned this into linen, yarn or wool. The merchant took the finished product and sold it in bulk as yards of cloth (the average price wool was sold for in bulk was usually about 26 shillings for every 28 pounds).[1] How much time it took to produce the cloth varied, but generally a weaver needed the product of at least 4-5 spinners working one week to finish. 4 shillings would have been the equivalent of about 2 days wages for a skilled textile worker, who generally earned about 33 pounds a year.