THE
MILLER
in Eighteenth-Century
VIRGINIA
An Account of Mills & the Craft of Milling, as well as a Description of the Windmill near the Palace in Williamsburg
Williamsburg Craft Series
WILLIAMSBURG
Published by Colonial Williamsburg
MCMLXXVIII
The Miller in Eighteenth-Century Virginia
The reader of this account, being of openmind and charitable disposition, as good menand women have ever been, will readily recognizethat whatever may appear in these pagesto the discredit of millers in times past cannotbe taken to reflect in any fashion upon the presentmaster of Mr. Robertson’s windmill. Indeed, the age-oldrepute of the calling is as distasteful to him and his colleaguesof today as it would be inappropriate if applied tothem.
Unhappily, it cannot be denied that millers of an earlierday—those of Chaucer’s generation, for example—left somethingto be desired in the way of scruple. That gifted storytellerand honest reporter of the age in which he lived gaveprominent place in his Canterbury Tales to two millers.One of these was the villain and ultimate victim in theReeve’s Tale: “A thief he was, forsooth, of corn and meal;And sly at that, accustomed well to steal.”
The other miller of the Canterbury Tales was himself oneof the pilgrims, as merry and uncouth a rogue as one couldfind in any band of cathedral-bound penitents: “He couldsteal corn and full thrice charge his tolls; and yet he had athumb of gold, begad.” That last remark, an allusion tothe proverb that “every honest miller has a thumb of gold,”cut a broad swath indeed. Only Chaucer’s own regard fortruth could have moved him thus to dignify the popular2belief that among millers integrity was as rare as twenty-four-caratthumbs.
Similar distrust can be discerned in early feudal and manoriallaws in England, which prescribed certain methods ofoperation for grist millers and established correspondingpenalties for violation. The miller was directed to chargespecified tolls for his services, and no more. The lord of themanor got his grain ground “hopper free,” since he generallyowned the mill and held the local milling monopoly. Underthe thirteenth-century Statute of Bakers, chartered land-holderspaid the miller one-twentieth of the grain he groundfor them, and tenants-at-will gave one-sixteenth, whilebondsmen and laborers had to part with one-twelfth of whatthey brought to the mill.
The same law also required that the miller’s “toll-fat”(or dish) and “sceppum” (or scoop) used to measure grainbe accurate. The manorial seal on a measure testified thatit had been compared with the standard measure and foundexact. But millers in all lands and times (the present excepted,of course) have been adept at finding ways to outwitlaw and customer at the same time.
A method popular among some millers was to build squarehousings for the millstones, thus providing four innocentcorners in which quite a bit of meal could collect. The moreartful members of the craft built a concealed sp