Newcastle Waits

NEWCASTLE WAITS REFERENCES number 1

1 Madeleine Hope Dodds ‘Northern Minstrels and Folk Drama’ Archaeologia Aeliana (1925), 4 series, v1, p.121-146

Earliest mention of minstrels from Ncle in Durham Priory Account Rolls, which mentions rewards given to them in 1278, 1335-6, 1360. Also town waits at Darlington in 16th century, at Gateshead in 17th century, Alnwick waits survived till 19th century.

2 John Brand ‘History and Antiquities of the Town and County of the Town of Newcastle upon Tyne, v 2, (London: B. White, 1789)

Pages 353-354
‘The ordinary of this society, citing an ancient one that had been lost, and dated September 18th, 1677, appointed them a fellowship with perpetual succession; enjoined them to meet on the feast of St James the Apostle, and choose two stewards who might sue and be sued, &c. within the courts of Newcastle; that the admission fee should be ten shillings, but to those who came in by patrimony only six shillings and eight-pence; that none should teach music without a licence from the mayor; that no stranger should be suffered to play at weddings or feasts, unless allowed by the mayor, under a penalty of six shillings and eight-pence; that no fiddler, piper, dancer upon ropes, or others that pretended to skill in musick, or that went about with “motions or shewes”, should practice in Newcastle without licence from the mayor, on pain of forfeiting ten shillings; that at marriages where music should be chosen, the waits should be preferred; and if any other musicians, who had the mayor’s licence, were called, their fee should not exceed three shillings and four-pence, under a penalty of ten shillings. [Source footnote: From the book of inrolments in the archives of the Corporation of Newcastle. - In a list of the salaries in the time of Queen Elizabeth (ie 1558-1603) ibid. the following entry occurs: “Five waites sallary 20l.”]
By an order of common-council, November 4th, 1646, the waits were commanded to go about morning and evening, according to ancient custom.’

Page 717, Appendix
‘Waits’ Ordinary 1677’ gives the full text where the society is described as ‘fellowship or company of waites and musicioners’ and the petition is signed by the following members:
Robert Word, John Bell, Thomas Moore (Steward 1677), Edward Herbert (Steward 1677), Edward Sweeting.

However, it should be noted that members of the company were not Freemen of the Town.

3 Extracts from The Municipal Accounts of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Newcastle: M.A. Richardson, 1848)

Page 10
1561, November, Item, paid to Mr. Maior [ie Mayor] that he gave to two Skottes minstrilles in rewarde, 2s.
Page 11
1561, December, Item, paid mor to Mr. Maior that he gave to two mynstrilles on Saint Thomas’ daye, 2s.
1561, Jan. [ie 1561/2] Item, paid to Mayster Maior that he gave to the mynstrilles of this towne and to other mynstrilles of the contrathe [country] in Chrystemmas, 13s 4d.
Page 12
1561, Feb. [ie 1561/2] Item, paid to Mayster Maior for that he gave to Sir Henry Persy [ie Percy] mynstrilles in rewarde, 6s.
Item, paid more geven in rewarde to the wayttes of Ledes, 4s.
1561, March [ie 1561/2] paid by Mr. Maior to the wayttes of Thriske [ie Thirsk], geven them in rewarde, 3s.
Item, paid mor geven in rewarde to the wayttes of Carlell [ie Carlisle], 3s.
Item, paid mor geven in rewarde to the wayttes of Darnton [ie Darlington], 3s.
Item, paid in rewarde to the Skottes mynstrelles, 2s.
1561, June Item, geving to the waytts of Cockeremouthe in rewarde, 3s.
Page 15-16
1565, Octobar Item, paid to Mr. Maior for that he gave in rewarde to jesters and mynstrilles for this yeare, as apperythe by the bucke [ie book] of orders, 5l.
Page 17
1568, Maye The charges of the boner of the play - including ‘to the waites, for playeing befor the players, 2s.

1568-1574 some books missing

Page 19
1579, July Geven to the waittes for playing on Midsommer even, 12d.
Page 20
1590, October Paid to the mynstrilles of Whickham [County Durham], in rewarde, 3s 10d [for court day there].
Page 27
1593, October Paid to Mr. John Oldam att London … for 16 iiardes 3 quarters [of broadcloth for liveries] for the waites, the plumer, and the paver, at 7s. 6d. per iiarde, 8l. 5s. 7d.
Page 30
1593, November [Coronation celebrations] Paide to Will. Lassles and Ro. Askew for playing one the drum and floote, with the gunners, the 17 daie of Nov. for their paines, 5s.
Page 35
1594, October Paid for a banquet to the Staites [ie soldiers of Flanders coming from Scotland], in Mr Maior’s … the waits playinge musicke, 10s.
Paide to Ro. Askewe for playing with his fife before the drume, 16d.
Paide to the waites for playing musicke at the audit dynner, 5s.
Page 50
1647, Aprill [for Coronation day] to the gaurds [sic] and waits, 10s.
Page 53
1657, August Paid which was given to the waites and trumpetters … 40s. [on proclamation of the Lord Protector]
Page 54
1658, Ocotber [proclamation of Lord Protector] Paid … to the waitts … 33s.
Page 55
1658, Nov. [for 5th November celebrations] Paid which was given the waites … by order of Mr. Maior, 20s.
Page 57
1660, 19 May [proclamation of the King] Paid the waits by order of the deputy mayor, 20s.

Supplied by Margaret Maddison

NEWCASTLE WAITS: a list taken mainly from parish registers arranged by active date

While checking the Newcastle parish registers from the earliest date to 1690 for another topic I have recorded the waits and musicians so named. There are a few others picked up from other sources (eg Municipal Accounts) or later dates in the registers.

  The parish registers are as follows:
  All Saints commencing 1600
St Andrew commencing 1597
St John commencing 1600 (almost no occupations after 1675)
St Nicholas commencing 1558 (occupations do not start till 1575)

  This will by no means be a complete list. There are many missing registers and smaller gaps (eg the plague years 1635-6) or illegible sections in the registers. There are many registers in which the clerk has listed no occupations at all and others where they are infrequent or only given for guild members. Some clerks use the word musicioner, others use musician or practitioner in music when clearly all mean the same as they refer to the same people - I have used the word musician for all of these, except the 'waits & musicioners' recorded in their 1677 Company Ordinary (the only record of the Company to survive).

Margaret Maddison

1595 Banquets were frequent at this time and there were also visits by waits from quite far afield, including Leeds. There were Scots and Irish minstrels, and dramatic performances by travelling players. Payments are recorded to a man with a hobby-horse, Lord Mounteagles' bearward and 'to him that had the lion'. from http://pages.britishlibrary.net/alan.myers/newc/newcastle.html

St John Newcastle Parish Registers: 1589 Oct 16 burial of Thomas Hairhope musishioner. Pest [ie plague which was then rife]

From: ‘Journeyings through Northumberland + Durham anno Dom m.dc.lxxvii’ (Newcastle upon Tyne: M.A. Richardson, 1845), p.9. [Taken from an account of a tour in Scotland by Thomas Kirk Esq. of Cookridge, Yorkshire, from the Thoresby MSS. No other waits mentioned.]

‘Friday 18th [1677], we saw St Nicholas Church [in Newcatle upon Tyne] … In the afternoon we went down the river; we had the wind-music and fiddles of the town. … [They visited North Shields and Tynemouth.] In our return we had abundance of rain, and were wet through the tilt [awning]; the fiddles were almost drowned, yet we made them play before us through the streets.’

From: Joseph Taylor, ‘A Journey to Edenborough in Scotland’ (Edinburgh: William Brown, 1903), p.81-90.

Joseph Taylor, barrister of the Inner Temple, plus two friends and servant, travelled from London to Scotland on horseback in 1705. They enjoyed music and dancing at several places but only seem to have hired waits at Newcastle. In Durham city they had sent for one of the ‘Singing Boys’, i.e. a Cathedral choirboy to entertain them with songs. They then travelled to Newcastle where they stayed for a few days up to 28 August. They had a recommendation to a Mr Green who introduced them to his friend Mr Bewick of Close House a few miles outside Newcastle where the young lady of the house played the spinet and they enjoyed country dances. In the evening Mr Green invited the prettiest young ladies to his own house in the Bigg Market and more dancing followed.

‘afterwards Mr Bewick came to our Lodgings, where drinking a glass of wine, we propos’d to send for the Musick, and serenade all the Ladys of the Town; we had 2 Hautboys, and 2 Violins*, with which we march’t round the Town, from 3 in the Morning, till towards 6: we caus’d 3 serendaing tunes to be particularly plai’d at Sir William Blacket[t]’s, Enamoretta’s [Mistress White] and Astraea’s [Mistress Writ[t]le] houses, which soon call’d up the pretty Creatures to their windowes; about 8 in the Morning 29th August we left Newcastle, without sleeping in it that night’.

* One of the waits was Richard Avison (father of the composer Charles Avison) who had been appointed a wait in 1702. The fifth wait Robert Blenkinsop was ill at the time.

Waits are discussed and the following waits are mentioned in:
Roz Southey ‘Music-making in North-East England during the eighteenth century’ (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), as well as many other local musicians, fiddlers, pipers etc (some of whom may have been waits)

NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE
Aldridge, John 1786>
Avison, Richard d.1721
Blenkinsop, Robert fl.1705-25
Cooper, Walter fl.1755
Cook, William d.1712/13
Franks, - fl.1739
Gale, John d.1765
Grey, William fl.1788
Howgill, Thomas d.1755
Jubb, William d.1742
Kell, Henry fl.1702 (possible wait)
Kell, Simpson fl.1746, d.1763
McFarlane, William d.1788
Martin, John fl.1717-20
Martin, Robert d.1740
Martin, William d. pre-1735
Newby, Richard fl.1763 d.1772
Robson, Robert d.1746
Ross, Thomas senr fl.1765 d.1786
Ross, Thomas junr fl. pre-1786
Shadforth, - fl.1772
Sinclair, William fl.1742 d.1783
Tait, Henry fl.1776
Walker, James fl.1772-83 d.1786
Wightman, John fl.1739-46
Wilkinson, Joseph d.1730/1
Wrightman, William fl.1739

"Oliver Cromwell stayed with his army in Newcastle for three days. As he dined in the mayor's house, he was serenaded by the Town Waits in their blue cloaks and beavers, on the little bridge over the Lort Burn near the Sandhill. He left on 20 October 1649, but returned on 15 July 1650 on his way to the fateful encounter with the Scots at Dunbar."

"John Peacock was a celebrated Northumbrian piper, who came to Newcastle originally from Morpeth, and was perhaps the best small pipes player who lived, although not a scientific performer. He was one of the Incorporated Company of Town Waits in Newcastle."

Avison family chapter 2 of Newcastle's Musical Heritage by Joseph W Pegg gives more information on Charles Avison, based on articles in The Musical Times of Jan and Feb 1954, as the third son of Richard (the wait) and Anne Avison, born in Newcastle on 16th February 1709..
It describes the Newcastle Waits dressed in three-cocked hats and blue cloaks. It also describes the visit of Charles I in 1633 on the way to Edinburgh to be crowned King of Scotland:
"The people received him with very great acknowledgements of love and he and his officers were sumptuously entertained by the mayor. While at dinner in the mayor's house the town's waits played outside on a little btidge over the Lort Burn near Sandhill."
The Waits continued in Newcastle until the 1790s when "amidst some modern, narrow and gloomy schemes of economy, the company was discharged.".

Charles Avison was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1709, being baptised at St. John's Church on 16th February. He was the fifth of nine children of Richard and Anne Avison who lived in the house beside St. Bartholomew's Nunnery in Nolt Market, Newcastle. They were both musicians and were presumably Avison's first music teachers. Richard was a member of the ancient Incorporated Company of Town Waits i.e. a member of the official town band, who was licensed to teach music in his spare time. He was paid the very small salary of £4 per annum (plus a uniform - valued at £5 when a cash substitute was offered) which he presumably supplemented with teaching.

"Richard Avison was a member of the ancient Incorporated Company of Town Waits (of Newcastle), who had their headquarters in the Waits Tower between Pilgrim Street Gate and the Carliol Tower. Originally engaged as night watchmen, they later became the official town band, licensed to teach music in their spare time. After years of strict training an apprentice wait had to demonstrate by examination his proficiency on the sackbut, hautboy, trumpet, recorder, cornet(t) or violin, if he wished to be made fdree of the Company. The instruments were often their own property. In other cases they were supplied by the Common Council, who, in the eighteenth century, interviewed and appointed candidates for vacancies in the town band.

A wait's basic wage was small. In 1694, when Richard Avison was a young man, it was £4 per annum. There were however perquisites. The Corporation provided a uniform of blue cloak and tricorn. Trouble occasionally arose over this free issue. Richard Avison must have associated with the petition which came before the Common Council on 25 August 1707, when the waits claimed that the new cloaks due them the previous Christmas were not yet forthcoming. The mayor and aldermen probed the claim and reported at the September meeting that it was justified. The waits were allowed £5 in lieu of uniform with the promise of £5 annually until such time as the mayor should 'think fit to give them cloaks'.

The waits received gratuities for their performance in national and local festivities, of which eighteenth century Newcastle had a goodly number. Four coronations, countless royal birthdays, thanksgivings for uneasy intervals of peace in a succession of continental and colonial wars were celebrated by processions of scarlet-clad officials, clergy and gentry, who were led by the waits in billowing blue cloaks along the route from the Guildhall to St. Nicholas's Church. Parochial concerns - Mayor's sunday, the Ascensiontide inspection of the river in the mayoral barge, the beating of the landward bounds, even the more intimate matter of the christening of his worship's twin daughters (on 13 April 1762), would have been incomplete without the attendance of the town band. His Majesty's judges on circuit were greeted on their arrival by the trumpeters provided by the Incorporated Company. A wait's income could be further supplemented by giving private lessons. What he earned in this way was conditioned by has teaching ability and the fees he elected to charge.

From the fear of illness and the onset of old age with its attendant disabilities the waits enjoyed some relief. Upon retirement the Company paid them an annual pension of £7 for life. In 1726 Robert Blenkinsopp complained to the Common Council that the Company had refused to pay his pension, whereupon the Council threatened to deduct the money from their corporation grant. Blenkinsopp's pension, which he had been drawing for some considerable time, was promptly restored. A Common Council minute of 8 October 1705 records that, as Robert Blenkinsopp was blind, infirm and unable to work, 'it is ordered that John Jubb be settled in his room and place for the end and purpose to make the waits a better company and a good concert of music and that the said Robert Blenkinsopp, in respect of his necessity and infirmity, have paid him quarterly out of the Town during pleasure £2-10-0.'

The Corporation certainly promoted the welfare of the town band. In return they demanded a high standard of professional competence and personal behaviour. Alderman Carr was appointed (22 September 1709) to report on divers irregularities committed by Robert Martin "to the great prejudice of the company of waites of this town and country". Later in the century the Common Council, under the chairmanship of Sir Walter Blackett, adjudged Walter Cooper insufficiently qualified for the position of wait. He was further convicted of misbehaviour and summarily dismissed."

Footnote in the same article, from the Book of Enrolments of Newcastle Corporation for 18 September 1677:

"'Whereas the company of waites and musicioners of the said town are and have been time out of mind an antient company incorporated by the name of the fellowship of waites and musicioners and they haveing casually lost their said ordinary by which they were so incorporated .. [the Corporation grant them] a perpetual succession within the said towne and county and liberties thereof.' The mayor and aldermen reserved the right to disband the waits at any time. William Yielder, mayor, Sir Matthew White Ridley, alderman, Henry Joseph Hounsam, sheriff, and 20 members of the Common Council exercised this right (23 December 1793): they abolished the town band and discharged the waits without any Christmas gratuity."

Music and Letters, vol 55, pp. 6-7 (1974), from an article about Charles Avison by P M Horsley.

"John Peacock, the last of the Newcastle Waits, and reputedly one of the best performers of the time."

"John Peacock was a legendary Northumbrian piper, credited with extending the range of the instrument through the innovation of adding keys to the plain chanter. Although renowned in his time, Peacock fell on hard times toward the end of his life, and had to rely on the generosity of others in the piping community. "…Peacock (was a) celebrated Northumbrian piper, who came to Newcastle originally from Morpeth, and was perhaps the best small-pipes player who lived, although not a scientific performer. He was one of the Incorporated Company of Town Waits in Newcastle, and in 1805 in conjunction with William Wright, published a small oblong book of Tunes for the Northumbrian Small Pipes, of which only two or three copies are now known to exist" (Bruce & Stokoe). Peacock lived from 1754(or 6) to 1817 and was taught by William Lamshaw at a time when the smallpipes were just beginning to decline in popluarity."

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