The Boy’s Bailiff at Wenlock

In Whitsun week Much Wenlock kept a custom called the Boy’s Bailiff. A man in a haircloth gown played the bailiff, with a recorder, justices and other mock officers, and a large company of men and boys rode out on horseback with wooden swords worn on the right side, so that they had to draw them left-handed. They called at the gentlemen’s houses of the franchise for refreshments, then gathered at the Guildhall, where the town clerk read out a rigmarole they called their charter, naming the far points of the franchise. Collins thought it grew out of the walking of the bounds.