| Description | Heavy work for the J.P.'s of Anglesey, as outlined in this letter. He asks them, by the coming Great Sessions, to examine carefully the state of the impotent poor, to provide (through overseers) a competent stock of materials for those that were able to work, raise money weekly or monthly to relieve the truly needy, find out what people able to take in apprentices, and what poor people able to work persisted in refusing to do it - all to be set down in a "perfect booke? ready to be presented on the Monday or Tuesday at the aforesaid Great Sessions. It would be interesting to know what response was made to this order; and if an effective response was made, what has become of the perfect book and the exact account asked for. Adam Littleton was a member of a distinguished legal family in Salop, who produced several Judges of Great Sessions in Wales; he himself was a member of the Council of the Marches since 1635, and was made Justice of Great Sessions in the circuit which included Anglesey in 1637: this order was probably made by him as a member of the Council, fortified by the knowledge he had gained of “your Countrey” of Anglesey in the rounds he had already made (see W.W. Williams Hist. of Great Sessions, 95-96) |