contrary to my better judgment, which fixed the period of its erection there, perhaps to a century later, because, in those darker days to which I have referred, monuments of such forms and in similar situations were greatly coveted "to the intent they might bear the blessed body of our Lord, and the sepulture at the time of Easter." These considerations carried me back to the times of pardons, bulls, and indulgences, and I could not but think that our ancestors accomplished all that they took in hand with a zeal and promptness which would have done credit to a better cause. They ate heartily, they drank heartily, they fought heartily, and in some instances they prayed heartily, though those tears which would have cleansed their eyes from the scales of error had been suppressed by their fondly cherished hopes of human merit, and their patchwork notions of a false sufficiency. I thought of legends and martyrs and miracles, of masses and of dirges, of saints, popes, cardinals, and bishops, and all the paraphernalia of a system, in every sense of the word, imposing in the highest degree. I saw in vision a high goodly altar of fair stone formed into niches, peopled with "silver saviours and with saints of gold," and, on weighing the sarcasm couched in this line, found it borne out by facts. I thought of Chaucer's Prioress's Tale, and the young innocent prostrate on his bier :

And after that, the abbot and him convent, Han spedde them for to berie him ful faste, But, when they holy water on him caste, Then spake the child, when spreint was the holy water, sung

And

O alma Redemptoris Mater!”

I had remarked too, fronting its south entrance, a Gothic tomb, from which the

*

On the south side of the chancel is a magnificent altar-tomb, supposed to mark the burial place of one of the Woodville or Wydvill family, who possessed the Mote, a seat of considerable antiquity in the neighbourhood, now occupied by lord Romney, and who was probably a benefactor to this beautiful edifice, as the arms which ornament it are to be found in other parts of the church; particularly on the wooden seats hereafter mentioned. consists of a large slab of Bethersden marble, having indents in which the brass figure of an ecclesiastic under a Gothic canopy, and three smaller effigies with similar decorations, have been inlaid. At the back, and at each end of the recess, are figures al-fresco, so shamefully

It

brass inlays had been purloined by our "reformers," whilst the Vandals of later times had so hacked and hewed about the fresco paintings which adorned it that they exhibited a pitiful wreck of vermilion and verditer, with here and there the limb of a golden nimbus or the fragment of a scroll. With some difficulty I had decyphered the first word of that well-known salutation" Ave Maria gratia plena !” and had mused on the ancient gloriesof the queen of heaven, to whom monastic austerity and knightly honor had in former times yielded equal honors. I had seen the snow-white pinnacles of a range of splendid stalls beside the altar,* lifting their goodly summits in beauteous contrast with the gold and crimson which still disfigured this tomb, and had fancied the clear wintry moon, as it shone through the lofty windows,

defaced, that it is impossible to say for whom they were intended. One is very like the common representations of St. Katherine, for whom it was most probably designed. Another I conclude to be a portraiture of the Virgin, as an angel is kneeling before it with a label from his mouth; the inscription which it formerly bore is so completely defaced, that not a letter is distinctly legible: the word abc, with an illuminated initial, may with some difficulty be decyphered a fourth figure, still more imperfect, remains, and at the foot of the tomb another, habited as an archbishop, mitred and holding a crosier, which, with one something similar at the opposite extremity, is in a very creditable state of preservation. A canopy of elegant Gothic stone-work covers the whole : it consists of four arches, rising in florid pinnacles, with two of smaller dimensions on each side. These are ornamented with coats of arms, which it is impossible to describe correctly, as they have been carelessly repainted by some person ill-versed in heraldry.

On the south side of the altar are the remains of five very costly stone stalls, surmounted by as many turrets of open work terminating in crocketed pinnacles.

the tomb covered all that was mortal of some wealthy ecclesiastic, who probably, with an accommodating conscience, could preach against those vices which he was most forward in the practice of. I passed from the consideration of this sordid rank to the humbler orders of the priesthood, and fancied a good man of religion, announcing those glorious truths which, though not in all cases equally prized, had been no less precious in the days of Chaucer. I had seen him in the pulpit anxious to gain the ears and hearts of his people, stretching forth his neck east and west,

As doth a dove sitting upon a berne,"

and had followed him in his other pastoral duties-for he had been one who well deserved this beautiful eulogium,"This noble ensample to his shepe he gafThat first he wrought and afterward he taught Out of the gospel he the wordes caught, And this figure he added yet thereto That if golde ruste what should iron do.” I had strayed amongst the dark oak stalls and raised their ponderous seats to look on the grotesque carvings beneath, and, in my fear of startling the calm and

The ancient oak-stalls belonging to the brethren of the College of All Saints, adjoining this edifice, still remain they are twentyeight in number, and are ornamented beneath the seats with carvings, consisting of foliage, fowers, armorial bearings, and grotesque heads

and figures. On the pall, in the archiepiscurs, it has been hacked about so as to be almost obliterated. Surely the rage of the puritans and iconoclasts was not a zeal according to knowledge, since it led them thus to mutilate and destroy the most appropriate symbol of our holy faith.

copal arms, and wherever else the cross oc

"These pals of passing gaine,' as they are called by an early rhymester, from the extraordinary price which the Pope received for them, were bishop's vestments, "going over the shoulders, made of sheep's skin, in memory of Him who sought the lost sheep, and, when he had found it, layed it on his shoulders." They were embroidered with crosses, and manufactured from the whitest flecces which could be procured, the lambs from which they were shorn having been previously presented at the altar of St. Agnes, on the day appropriated to her worship. This knowledge of their origin rendered them peculiarly obnoxious to the reformers, and occasioned the mutilation referred to."--Summer Wanderings.

quiet of the place, had handled them with such trepidation that the very thing I was so studious to avoid came about, and they fell from my grasp with a sound that made every nerve quake within me. I had looked with a curious eye on that immense slab of grey stone between them, graven with the outline of a full-length figure habited as an archbishop, and, as I moralized on the end of earth's highest honors, had turned to the memorial adjoining, of which all that could be decyphered was part of the word "requiescit" in a very antique character, rejoicing that the rest referred to had been common to our earliest ancestors, and yet remained for the followers of that pure and undefiled religion inculcated by the Gospel.

I had passed from its cool shade into the pleasant sunshine, and beside the door had noticed a monumental stone for one who had attained the vast age of five score years and four,† and had leant over the low stone wall of its church-yard listening to the rushing river below, as it leapt over the dam of an adjacent lock and hissed furiously onward.

With all these remembrances were its dark battlements and gleamy roof associated, as I gazed on them from the commanding height where I was now posted. The hills around rose in successive series, the summits only of each range being visible above the misty vapors that hung about their bases, whilst the sun, occasionally slanting through the shadowy groves which crowned them, imparted a semitransparent effect to the heights thus gladdened by his cheering influences. I felt the magic of the scene, and attempted a description, in which I made no farther progress than the following stanzas :--

* The tomb of archbishop Courteney. It consists of an immense slab of grey stone, having indents of a figure nearly as large as life, with mitre and crosier, under a Gothic canopy, and surrounded by smaller figures similarly placed. Immediately adjoining it there is a fragment of another memorial: part of the word

(Requ) IESCIT

is all that remains of the inscription.

In the church-yard there are few epitaphs worthy of note. Near the south side of the church, however, there is one singular for the longevity of the party it commemorates :

"Here lyeth interr'd the body of Joan Heath, who departed this life, June ye 4th, 1706. Aged 104 years."

Look on the valley! how the sun-light plays,

Where those dim dewy house-tops intervene,
So softened down, as through the pearly haze
It trembles forth upon the noiseless scene,
Like the meek moon-beam when its lustre strays
O'er the still waters' melancholy sheen-
Or those mild gleamings from the thunder-
cloud

That seem the smiles of beauty in her shroud!
A bank of dreamy vapor hangs about
The distant hills, whilst on its sullen face
The nearer landscape, coldly shadowed out,
Seems a dim picture, where the eye may trace
Tall spire and nodding grove, but still in doubt
Deem it some fairy scene of transient grace,
Till the quick sun-burst streaks the motley
height

And calls its glories into beauteous light.

So have I seen the playful breeze at morn,
Softer than the salt sea's receding wave,
Leap in its mirth along the flashing corn,—
So Hope breaks forth to light us through the
grave,

Whilst giant Faith, on stedfast wing upborne,
Finds all that Fear can want, orWeakness crave,
Safe where essential day knows no declining,
Suns cannot set, nor moons withhold their
shining.
D. A.
London.

March 25,

LADY DAY.

This is the festival of the Annunciation;

the manner of its observance in former times is related in the Every Day Book.

WEATHER-COCKS IN KENT.

On the 25th of March, 1672, Mr. Evelyn journed to the coast of Kent in an official capacity, and enters in his diary,-"I came back through a country the best cultivated of any that in my life I had ever seen; every field lying as even as a bowling-green, and the fences, plantations, and husbandry in such admirable order as infinitely delighted me--observing almost every tall tree to have a weathercock on the top bough, and some trees half-adozen. I learned that on a certain holiday the farmers feast their servants, at which solemnity they set up these cocks as a kind of triumph."

March 26.

WITCH-FINDING AT NEWCASTLE. Mention occurs of a petition in the common council books of Newcastle, dated March 26th, 1649, and signed, no doubt, by the inhabitants, concerning witches, the purport of which appears, from what followed, to have occasioned all such persons as were suspected, to be apprehended and brought to trial. In consequence of this the magistrates sent two of their serjeants into Scotland, to agree with a Scotchman, who pretended knowledge to find out witches by pricking them with pins, to come to Newcastle, where he should try such as should be brought to him, and have twenty shillings a-piece for all he should condemn as witches, and free passage thither and back. When the serjeants brought the witch-finder on horseback to town, the magistrates sent their bellman through the town, ringing his bell and crying, all people that would bring in any complaint against any woman for a witch, they should be sent for, and tried by the person appointed. Thirty women were brought into the Town Hall, and had pins thrust into their flesh, and most of them were found guilty. The witch-finder acquainted lieut. col. Hobson, that he knew whether women were witches or no by their look: but, when the said person was searching of a personable and good-like woman, the said colonel replied, and said, surely this woman is none, and need not be tried; but the Scotchman said she was, for the town said she was, and therefore he would try her: and presently he ran a pin into her and set her aside as a guilty person, and child of the devil, and fell to try others, whom he pronouuced guilty. Lieut. col. Hobson proved upon the spot the fallacy of the fellow's trial of the woman, and then the Scotchman cleared her, and said she was not a child of the devil.

It appears by an extract from the registry of the parochial chapelry of St. Andrews, in Scotland, that one man and fifteen women were executed at Newcastle for witchcraft; and there is a print of this horrid execution in "Gardner's England's Grievance discovered, 1655," reprinted at Newcastle, 1796.

When the witch-finder had done in Newcastle, and received his wages, he went into Northumberland, to try women there, and got three pounds a-piece; but

Henry Ogle, esq., laid hold on h andim, required bond of him, to answer at the sessions. He escaped into Scotland, where he was made prisoner, indicted, arraigned, and condemned for such-like villany exercised in Scotland, and confessed at the gallows that he had been the death of above two hundred and twenty women in England and Scotland, for the gain of twenty shillings a-piece.*

WITCHES AND CHARMS.

It is related, in the Life of Lord Keeper Guildford, that, upon the circuit at Taunton Dean, he detected an imposture and conspiracy against an old man charged with having bewitched a girl of about thirteen years of age, who, during pretended convulsions, took crooked pins into her mouth and spit them afterwards

into bye-standers' hands. As the judge

went down stairs out of the court, an hideous old woman cried, "God bless "What's the matter, your worship."

good woman?" said the judge. "My lord," said she, "forty years ago they would have hanged me for a witch, and they could not, and now they would have hanged my poor son."

On Lord Guildford's first circuit westward, Mr. Justice Rainsford, who had gone former circuits there, went with him, and said that the year before a witch was brought to Salisbury and tried before him. Sir James Long came to his chamber and made a heavy complaint of this witch, and said that, if she escaped, his estate would not be worth any thing; for all the people would go away. It happened that the witch was acquitted, and the knight continued extremely concerned; therefore Rainsford, to save the poor gentleman's estate, ordered the woman to be kept in gaol, and that the town should allow her 2s. 6d. a week, for which he was very thankful. very next assizes he came to the judge to desire his lordship would let her come back to the town.

The

"And why? They could keep her for 1s. 6d. there, and in the gaol she cost them a shilling more."

There is a passage to the following purport, which is much to the present purpose, in the life before cited of the Lord Keeper Guildford :-"It is seldom that a poor old wretch is brought to trial

* Sykes's Local Records, Newcastle, 1824.

for witchcraft but there is at the heels of her a popular rage that does little less than demand her to be put to death, and if a judge is so clear and open as to declare against that impious vulgar opinion, that the devil himself has power to torment and kill innocent children, or that he is pleased to divert himself with the good people's cheese, butter, pigs, and geese, and the like errors of the ignorant and foolish rabble, the countrymen, the jury, cry, this judge hath no religion, for he doth not believe witches, and so, to show that they have some, they hang the poor wretches."

A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for March, 1736, says, "the old woman must by age be grown very ugly, her face shriveled, her body doubled, and her voice scarce intelligible: hence her form made her a terror to the children, who, if

they were affrighted at the poor creature, were immediately said to be bewitched, The mother sends for the parish priest, and the priest for a constable. The imand the paralytic nodding of her head, perfect pronunciation of the old woman,

were concluded to be muttering diabolical charms and using certain magical gestures; these were proved upon her at the next assizes, and she was burnt or hanged as an enemy to mankind.”

The subjoined recipe is from Reginald Scott's Discovery of Witchcraft :—

"A Special Charm to preserve all Cattle from Witchcraft.

"At Easter you must take certain drops candle, and make a little wax candle that lie uppermost of the holy paschal thereof; and upon some Sunday morning rathe, light and hold it so as it may drop upon and between the horns and ears of Filii, &c., and burn the beast a little bethe beast, saying, In nomine Patris et

tween the horns on the ears with the same wax, and that which is left thereof stick it cross-wise about the stable or stall, or upon the threshold, or over the door, where the cattle use to go in and shall never be bewitched." out and, for all that year, your cattle

According to Mr. Pennant, the farmers in Scotland carefully preserve their cattle against witchcraft by placing boughs of mountain-ash and honeysuckle in their cow-houses on the 2nd of May. They hope to preserve the milk of their cows,

March 27, 1625, king James I. died at Theobalds, in the 59th year of his age, and at the commencement of the twentythird year of his reign in England.

James I. had many virtues, but scarcely any of them free from neighbouring vices. His generosity bordered on profusion, his learning on pedantry, his pacific disposition on pusillanimity, his wisdom on cunning, his friendship on light fancy and boyish fondness. While he endeavoured, by an exact neutrality, to acquire the good will of all his neighbours, he was not able to preserve, fully, the esteem and regard of any. Upon the whole, it may be pronounced of his character that all his qualities were sullied with weakness, and embellished by humanity. Hunting and school divinity seem to have been his favorite pursuits.†

DRESS, TEMP. JAMES I.

Henry Vere, the gallant earl of Oxford, was the first nobleman that appeared at court, in the reign of James I., with a hat and white feather; which was sometimes worn by the king himself.

The long love lock seems to have been first in fashion among the beaux in this reign, who sometimes stuck flowers in their ears.

William, earl of Pembroke, a man far

from an effeminate character, is repre

sented with ear-rings.

Wrought night-caps were in use in the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I. Privy-counsellors and physicians wore them embroidered with gold and silk: those worn by the clergy were only black and white. Mrs. Kennon, the midwife, a collector of curiosities, had the nightcap of Oliver Cromwell, embroidered with black.

* Brand.

+ Hume.

James appears to have left the beard in much the same state as he found it on his accession to the throne.

The cloak, a dress of great antiquity, was more worn in this than in any of the preceding reigns. It continued to be in fashion after the restoration of Charles II.

It is well known that James I. used to hunt in a ruff and trowsers.

We learn, from sir Thomas Overbury, that yellow stockings were worn by some of the ordinary gentlemen in the country.

Silk garters, puffed in a large knot, were worn below the knees, and knots, or roses, in the shoes.

the

Wilson informs us that the countess of Essex, after her divorce, appeared at court" in the habit of a virgin, with her hair pendant almost to her feet: princess Elizabeth, with much more propriety, wore hers in the same manner when she went to be married to the prince Palatine.

The head of the countess of Esse seems to be oppressed with ornaments; and she appears to have exposed more of the bosom than was seen in any former period.

The ladies began to indulge a strong passion for foreign laces in the reign of James, which rather increased than abated in succeeding generations.

The ruff and farthingale still continued to be worn. Yellow starch for ruffs, first invented by the French, and adapted to the sallow complexions of that people, was introduced by Mrs. Turner, a physician's widow, who had a principal hand in poisoning sir Thomas Overbury. This vain and infamous woman, who went to be hanged in a ruff of that color, helped to support the fashion as long as she was able. It began to decline upon her exe

cution.

The ladies, like those of Spain, were James, which was, perhaps, a reason why banished from court, during the reign of dress underwent very little alteration during that period.

It may not be impertinent to remark that the lady of sir Robert Cary, afterwards earl of Monmouth, was mistress of the sweet (or perfumed) coffers to Anne of Denmark; an office which answered to that of mistress of the robes at present.

It appears from portraits that long coats were worn by boys, till they were seven or eight years of age, or upwards. The dress now worn by the blue coat boys, in London, was that of the time