"getting together a quorum." If the truth
must be told, our forefathers in the good old times had a way of
preventing its being "dry," and the parish accounts I have no doubt in
every village in the district as well as in Royston, still record the
unvarnished tale! The custom was for the clergyman to announce in
Church on Sunday the day and hour of meeting of the vestry--generally
on a Monday--and also the subject which was to engage the attention
{33} of the vestry. Monday morning came and with it the tolling of the
bell to summon the vestry, but this was only the letter and not the
spirit of the Local Parliament, which was forthwith adjourned from the
Church to a more convenient and also more congenial time and place,
viz., at six o'clock in the evening "at the house of William Cobb, at
the sign of the Black Swan," or some other name and house as the case
might lie.

The general practice of holding meetings by adjournment from Church
seems to have been framed on the principle of giving all the publicans
a turn, for in the seven years, 1776-82, the vestry meetings for
Royston, Herts., were held at twenty-two different inns or
public-houses. Here is a typical entry which explains the whole system
prevailing during last century:--

"Ordered that this meeting be adjourned to this Day Month at 4 o'clock
at Church, and from thence to be adjourned to some public-house to
finish the business for the month, during the Cold Weather."

In this way the tradesmen of the town, or the farmer, the blacksmith
and tailor in the village, relieved from the cares of the day,
assembled in the evening on the sanded floor of the old inn, and,
studiously furnished by Boniface with long Churchwarden "clays," puffed
away, until, through the curling fumes which arose from the reflecting
group of statesmen, parochial projects loomed large and a little
business was sometimes made to go a long way! The "licker" and the
fumes inspired sage talk on mild politics, and of enhanced prices to
come, some war that was talked of "in Roosia or som'er out that
country," mixed up with reminiscences of wars that had been, and the
rare prices that had ruled in Royston Market!

There was a blunt honesty and an entire absence of squeamishness in
these public servants of the good old days, and what was considered
necessary and proper on such occasions, both for their own proper
dignity and "the good of the house," they did not hesitate to order,
and for t