In these days, when so much is heard in favour of coming back to the Parochial area as the unit of local government, it may be of interest just to glance back at the condition of things when, in the last century, the parish vestry was almost omnipotent, and controlled all sorts of things, from a pauper's outfit, or from marrying a pauper, to the maintenance of the fire engine, the repair of the Church, and the wine used at the Communion! The oldest materials I have found available for obtaining a glimpse of the Parochial Parliament at work, both in Royston and neighbouring parishes, have been the Royston parish books, and sundry papers and accounts which have come under my notice belonging to neighbouring parishes. It was customary for everyone attending a vestry to sign his name or make his mark, a good old custom worth continuing in every parish vestry--and it was no uncommon thing to find from a dozen to fifteen names entered. Parish business was not in those days the dry affair it often is in these days of "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."