Here is one way in which they managed a Parochial Assessment--
"Ordered that six of the principal inhabitants of Royston look over all the estates in the town, and each send in his own estimated list of their ratable value to a special meeting, and from those different lists form a revised list of assessment to be afterwards stuck on the Church door, allowing objections to be made, and if necessary amending assessments accordingly, first calling in the assistance of Mr. Jackson, of Barkway, the land surveyor."
The assessment was evidently a low one, for the highest amount paid for a shilling rate was 18s., and the lowest 1s. 6d. As to the property assessed, wool-staplers and maltsters were the principal items. A shilling rate for Royston, Cambs., produced about one-fourth of what it does now.
The year 1781 marked a new era in the local Parliament for Royston, both for the improved local authority then instituted and for the unity of the town. This was brought about by what, for want of a better name, I will call the Act of Union, by which the divided parish of Royston in Herts. and Cambs. was made one for local government purposes, with one vestry, one clerk, and one beadle, but with separate overseers and churchwardens. The management of the business under this Act of Union was placed in the hands of a Committee, consisting of the churchwardens and overseers, and of eight gentlemen for the Hertfordshire side, and three for Cambs. The new local parliament was made up of the following:--For Hertfordshire, George North, churchwarden, Henry Andrews (the astronomer), and Wm. Cockett, the two overseers; Tuttle Sherwood, churchwarden, and Thomas Moule and Thomas Watson, overseers for the Cambs. side; and the following elected members, viz., for _Herts._, John Phillips, Michael Phillips, Edward Day, Wm. Nash, Samuel Coxall, Thomas Wortham, William Stamford, junr., and Thomas Watson; for _Cambs._, Joseph Beldam, William Butler and John James.
The above Act of Union was passed as an experiment, and the Parliament was to be a triennial one, at the end of which period either party was at liberty to withdraw, but as a matter of fact it was formally renewed every three years and continued at least until 1809. The first act of the new local authority was to appoint Henry Watson as vestry clerk at a salary of five guineas a year, to decide that no poor should be allowed out of the Workhouse, only the casual poor, and also that