Chapter III: Part 3

Of the customs akin to Trial by Ordeal only one can find mention here. It was held that if the murderer touched, nay, even approached, the body of his victim, the wounds gushed forth blood, thus in _Richard the Third_, "dead Henry's wounds" are seen "to open their congealed mouths and bleed afresh" as Gloucester draws near the bier. And according to one of the picturesque legends of English history, when Richard the Lion-Heart encountered at Fontevrault his father's body, the blood gushed from the nostrils of the dead king, a proceeding which, as Richard's offence was at the worst but unkindness, showed a somewhat excessive sensibility on the part of the royal clay. The oddest and latest case of all is from Scotland. In 1688 Philip Stanfield was tried for parricide at Edinburgh; one count of the indictment stated how his father's body had bled at his sacrilegious touch. The Lord Advocate, Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, the "Bluidy Mackenzie" of covenanting legend and tradition, conducted the prosecution, and philosophic and cultured jurist as he was, he yet dwelt with much emphasis on the portentous sign. There was no lack of more satisfactory if more commonplace evidence, and young Stanfield assuredly merited the doom in the end meted out to him.

WAGER OF BATTLE

Judicial combat is a fascinating yet perplexing subject, having many side-issues whereupon the writer must sternly refrain. The case of David and Goliath was gravely urged (A.D. 867) as a precedent to Pope Nicholas I., and by him disdainfully put aside. The thing itself was unknown in Roman law, though the old legend of the Horatii and Curatii was part of its lore. But it was of the essence of chivalry, and the duel and the prize-fight were its legitimate offspring. "Where the hazel grew," so Mr George Nelson, our chief modern authority, picturesquely defines its region, but our attention here must be limited to England. That it was _not_ with us before the Conquest moves Bishop Stubbs to something of the scholar's mild amazement. The Normans, it seems clear, brought it with them from their continental home. A native accused of a serious crime by one of the invaders was tried by ordeal of battle, but a Norman had choice of the oath as well, and it was also used to decide which of the claimants should have a disputed piece of land. After the legal reforms of Henry II., it became an alternative proceeding in a limited class of actions. These were the Writ of Right (the most solemn method of trying title to land), accusations of murder, and treason. It had place only in appeals, in actions, that is to say, brought not in the king's name, but by an interested subject here called the Appellor, against whom the accused or Appellee might offer to prove his innocence by his body. The Appellor must accept the challenge unless he were maimed by age or wound. Likewise he could "Oust the Battle" (_i.e._ prove this mode of trial improper) if the accused were caught red-handed. The parties exchanged gloves, and gave pledges or wads (_vadiare bellum_); whence came Wager of Battle, afterwards the technical term for the whole process. In civil cases, if the litigants came to terms, the judge exacted a fine, called the Concord, while he who fought and lost must pay the mulct of Recusancy. In criminal matters he who resisted not till the stars shone forth was branded as Recreant or Craven and was forthwith strung up, and all his goods were declared forfeit. The Charters of Exemption purchased from overlord or king show how hateful the system was to the old English citizen. Henry I. enacted for a consideration that no Londoner should do battle, and in due course the men of Winchester, Lincoln, and Northampton obtained the like privilege.

The story of Leicester is worth the telling. In the time of Henry I. Earl Robert of Mellant ruled the town. It chanced that two burghers, Nicholas and Jeffrey, waged battle on a plea of land. For nine long hours they mauled each other with varying fortune, when one of them took to flight, and staggered, all unwitting, on the edge of a pit. The other saw his danger, and remembered that they twain were kinsmen. "'Ware o' the pit," he shouted; "turn back, lest thou fall therein." The spectators so lustily roared their approval, that the Earl heard it in his castle, and he, after due enquiry, granted that in time coming twenty-four jurors of Leicester should determine all civic disputes. One strange product of Trial by Combat was the Approver: a rascal who turned king's evidence, and fought with his late companions. Sometimes he accused other malefactors, and if he came off victor in five combats he was released, and banished the country. This system fell into gross abuse, for the Approver, greedy of freedom or hush-money, appealed honest men right and left. In the chronicle of William Gregory the Skinner (1456) we have an account of a duel fought by one Thomas Whitehorne, a criminal, caught in the New Forest, and lodged in prison at Winchester, where he remained for about three years, fighting ever and anon. "And that fals and untrewe peler (= Appelar) hadde of the Kynge every day 1d. ob." At last a proposed victim retorted the lie in his throat, and said that "he wold prove hyt with hys handys and spende hys lyfe and blode a-pone hys fals body." Then the judge "fulle curtesly informed this sympylle man" that "he and the peler moste be clothyed all in whyte schepys leter." Also each must have a stave of green ash, three feet long, the point thereof "a horne of yryn i-made lyke unto a rammy's horne;" and if these ash-plants broke, then they "moste fight with hyr handys, fystys, naylys, tethe, fete, and leggys." Moreover, they must strive fasting on the "moste sory and wrechyd greene about the town;" but "Huyt ys to schamfulle to reherse alle the condycyons of thys foule conflycte." And we must follow Gregory's precept rather than his example.

The Appellee, asking for inquiry as to his character, was reported "a fyscher and tayler of crafte," and therewith the "trewyste laborer and the moste gentellyte." The peler, with brazen insolence, offered _his_ character for inspection. There was much dubiety as to where and how he had lived when at large, but "Hange uppe Thome Whythorne" was the response of every reference he tendered. At last the day came. The Appellee, as became an innocent man, told his beads, and prayed long and earnestly, and wept full sore, and all present prayed for and with him. The "fals peler" scoffed thereat. "Thou fals trayter," yelled he; "why arte thou soo longe in fals bytter beleve?" The defendant's sole answer was so lusty a thwack that his staff flew all to pieces. Thereupon the peler's stave was taken away from _him_; "ande thenn they wente togedyr by the neckys," so using teeth and fist, "that the lethyr of clothing and fleshe was alle to rente in many placys of hyr bodys." It fared ill at first with the "meke innocent." His opponent had him down on the ground, and near choked the life out of him. But presently the meek one got up on his knees, and (the combat not being under Queensberry rules), "toke that fals peler by the nose with hys tethe, and put hys thombe in hys yee, that the peler cryde owte ande prayde hym of marcy, for he was fals unto God and unto hym." The peler's subsequent record is of the briefest, but, one is thankful to add, of the most edifying description. "And thenn he was confessyd and hanggyd, of whose soule God ha' marcy." Amen. "_Victus est et susp_," so for epitaph wrote the official scribe against his name. And the exchequer parchments knew him and his "_1d. ob. per diem_" no more.

The Champion, now but the shadow of a name, was a nobler offshoot of the system. Originally a witness, he was finally indispensable in civil cases wherein--for a legal reason not here to be discussed--the parties themselves must not engage. He was the proper advocate for churchmen, for women, and for the Crown; and his last appearance for royalty was in 1820, at the coronation of George IV. The Dymocks have held the manor of Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire for centuries by this tenure, and possibly their representative claimed a part in the pageant on the two subsequent occasions, but to have him ride up Westminster Hall in full armour and clang his gauntlet on the floor (as he did of old) would have savoured too much of Drury Lane pantomime for the taste of a cynical age. The Champion's dress and bearing were minutely ordered. His head (_e.g._) was shaven, but whether this was to give no hold to his foe, or to fulfil some old superstition, is still in debate among the learned. In the end he was usually a hireling, which fact may very well have accentuated the absurdity of the system. At any rate, towards the close of the thirteenth century it was only kept alive by the approvers. Then Chivalry came with its Treason Duel, and by the time of Richard II. the Chivalry Court was in full swing. Its forms, mainly imported, were after this wise. Upon the accusation and the exchange of gloves, time and place were assigned for the duel, and here the lists were set and staked. There were two gates, and hard by each a pavilion--one eastward for the appellant, and the other westward for the defendant. To the south was the judge's seat; and right and left were benches for the high-born, while the commons were made free of the unenclosed field. Near the judge an altar was decked with relics; and not far off there stood a gibbet and a scaffold. Men-at-arms were stationed between the palisades. There were heralds in gay tabards, a priest in full canonicals stood at the altar--but it were wearisome to enumerate all the officials.

The trial was held not less than forty days after the challenge; and the time being come, the heralds demanded silence; and the appellant was summoned three times by voice and by sound of trumpet. As he marched forward he was addressed by the Constable, "Who art thou, and wherefore comest thou armed to the door of these lists?" His answer given, he was taken to his pavilion, and afterwards was made to swear on the altar that his cause was just. The other did in like fashion. Then the pavilions were replaced by chairs whereon the combatants might take an occasional rest. Napkins holding a loaf and a bottle of water were hung on opposite ends of the lists. The marshal cried three times "_Laissez les aller_," and the pair went at it. Far better death than defeat. If either yielded, the marshal cried "Hoo," to declare the combat at an end. Then the wretch was taken to the scaffold on which his shield was hung reversed, his sword was broken, and his spurs hacked from his heels. He was now taken to the church where a mass for the dead was sung over him, and at last he was haled to the gibbet where the hangman claimed his prey.

This is the form of judicial combat that caught the fancy of our great writers. In Chaucer's _Knight's Tale_ there is the elaborate set to between Palamon and Arcite. In Shakespeare's _Richard II._ there is the fiasco of Norfolk and Hereford. In _Lear_ we have the fight to the death between Edmund and Edgar, and "every schoolboy knows" The Templar's duel in _Ivanhoe_.

Chivalry passed, yet not the half-forgotten wager of battle. A claim so to determine a civil dispute was made in 1571, to the great perplexity of the lawyers. Elaborate preparations were made, but the case was settled in other fashion. Under James I. bills were introduced into Parliament to abolish it, but they fell through, and in 1774, at the beginning of the North American troubles, when it was proposed to punish the New Englanders by depriving them of the appeal of murder, Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton, described it as that great pillar of the Constitution. Burke concurred, and the motion was lost. Perhaps they have it yet in the States, at least Dr Cooper, in editing, in 1857, the statutes at large of South Carolina, treats Wager of Battle as an existing fact. In England the end came in dramatic fashion. In May 1817 Mary Ashford--a young woman of Langley in Warwickshire, was found drowned under suspicious circumstances. A certain Abram Thornton was suspected of the murder; he was tried and acquitted, but there was much evidence against him, and he had played so ill a part in a horrid though vulgar tragedy that the relatives of the dead girl cast about to carry the matter further. Now, an old act provided that no acquittal by jury should bar an appeal of murder, so William Ashford, Mary's brother, appealed Thornton in the Court of King's Bench. He was attached, and when called upon pleaded "Not guilty, and am ready to defend the same by my body." He then threw down his glove on the floor of the Court. It was a curious turn; for no doubt men thought that he would put himself upon the country, and stand a second trial by jury. There was much legal argument (set forth at great length in the reports of the time), for the prosecuting counsel tried hard to "oust his battle," but to no purpose, and in the end Thornton was set free. In 1819, two years after the drowning of Mary Ashford, the Appeal of Murder Act (59 Geo. III. c. 46) abolished the last remnant of Wager of Battle.

THE PRESS-GANG

Smollett, Galt, Marryatt, and the other naval novelists, not those well-nigh forgotten Dry-as-dusts whose works encumber the back shelves of our law libraries, are the authorities for the press-gang of popular imagination. The sea-port invaded, the house surrounded at dead of night by man-o'-war's men with stout cudgels, and by naval officers with cutlasses; the able-bodied mariner knocked down _first_ and _then_ bid stand in the king's name; the official shilling thrust into his reluctant palm before he is hauled off in irons--who has not devoured with joy this wild romance, with its tang of the sea, its humour and rough frolic, the daring and exciting prelude to much more daring and more exciting achievements? But how far can we trust these entertaining authors? And what was the legal status of the press-gang?

We are like to get nearest the truth in a law case with its official documents and sifted evidence and considered decision. The trial of one Alexander Broadfoot for the murder of one Calahan is the best available. In the April of 1774 H.M.S. _Mortar_ lay at anchor off Bristol. The captain held a warrant of impressment, but he could delegate his authority only to a commissioned officer, whose name must be inserted in his order; and the only one aboard was the lieutenant. On the 25th the ship's boat was sent down Channel, _with neither captain nor lieutenant_ to look for men. She had no luck till evening, when she came across the _Bremen Factor_, a homeward bound merchantman, still some leagues from port, but beating thitherward up Channel. The man-o'-war's men having boarded her, were proceeding to search the hold, when they were confronted by Broadfoot, the boatswain, armed to the teeth. He demanded what they came for. "For you and your comrades," was the plain and honest, though no doubt irritating answer. "Keep back, I have a blunderbuss loaded with swan shot," said Broadfoot, levelling his piece. The press-gang stopped. "Where is your lieutenant?" he went on. (Evidently this boatswain knew a little of the law.) "He is not far off," was the evasive answer, showing that the man's acts and words had impressed his assailants. Did Broadfoot grasp the fact that they were trespassers? At any rate, he let fly, killed Calahan on the spot, and wounded two others. He was tried at Bristol, and acquitted of the capital charge--for the action of the man-o'-war's men was plainly irregular; but he was found guilty of manslaughter, for that he had used more force than was necessary. Another case is that of Robert Goldswain, a small freeholder at Marlow, in Bucks. In the March of 1778 he was a bargeman on the Thames, engaged in carrying timber to the king's yard; with a protection order from the Navy Board to him by name so long as he should continue in that service. But these were troubled times, the French had just declared for the revolted American colonists and our war-ships were frightfully undermanned; so, on the 16th of March, the Admiralty fixed the next night for a general press on the Thames, with direction to seize--despite protection orders--on all sailors and watermen whatsoever, saving and excepting merchant skippers and men exempted by special acts. Goldswain was in the net, and was passed from ship to ship down to the Nore, where his captors were overtaken by an order from the Court requiring a return to a writ of Habeas Corpus issued on his behalf. Counsel's argument for the Admiralty--that the device of first issuing protection orders to lure sea and watering men from their lurking-places, and then pouncing on them under the authority of a general press, was excellent--did not commend itself to the Court, which, in the battle over poor Goldswain's body, suspected some antagonism between the Admiralty and the Naval Board. In the end my lords gave way, and Marlow received again her ravished freeholder.

During the strain and stress of our eighteenth century war-making, when we had every need of seamen to man our battle-ships, and could not afford the market price for them, there was much impressment, and through frequent appeals to the courts the law on the subject was exactly determined. It was a prerogative of the Crown, a remnant of larger rights which at one time took in soldiers and ships, or their equivalent in cash (Hampden's famous trial scarce needs mention); it could not be justified (it was allowed) by reason, but only by public necessity. On command of the king all sea and river-faring men were liable to naval service in time of war. The right to impress was founded on immemorial usage, for, though given by no statute, it was recognised by many. It was so held on the authority of a case in Queen Elizabeth's reign: the sole customary exception was a ferryman; but merchant captains were in practice likewise allowed to go free. Only in Charles I.'s reign, when all the Crown prerogatives were jealously overhauled, was there any serious questioning of its legality, but it was exercised by the Commonwealth as well as by the Monarchy. Given up in fact some fifty years since, it has never been so in law. You find in Horner's _Crown Practice_ (1844) a form of _Habeas Corpus ad subjiciendum_ for impressed men, with the comment that it is little needed now.

Of the enormous number of commissions and statutes relating to impressment, an example taken here and there must suffice. The acts express amazement and virtuous indignation at mariners unwilling to serve. One (_temp._ Henry VII.) sets forth that such as are chosen, and have received their wages, shall, if they give leg-bail, be amerced in double, and go to prison for a year--when they are caught. Another (_temp._ Philip and Mary) reproves the Thames watermen who, in pressing time, "do willingly and obstinately withdraw, hide, and convey themselves into secret places and outcovers; and, after the said time of pressing is o'erpassed, return to their employments." After the Revolution an attempt was made to establish a naval reserve by means of a voluntary register, and so do away with impressment, but this was a complete failure. Then, to foster the coal and other trades, certain exceptions were granted; and still later, sailors in outward bound merchantmen were exempted because of the hardship inflicted on their employers (the hardship of the sailor impressed in sight of port after a long voyage was not considered). When a warship fell in with a merchantman on the high seas she impressed what men she would. British sailors found on board American vessels were hauled out forthwith, and this was one cause of the War of 1812.

Press-gang stories, more or less authentic, are numerous. Here are samples which serve to show that the searchers did not nicely discriminate between those who were and were not legally subject to impressment. A well-dressed man was seized. He protested that he was a gentleman of position. "The very boy we want," gleefully replied his captors; "for we've such a set of topping blackguards aboard the tender, that we wanted a gentleman to teach 'em manners." Sham press-gangs for the black-mailing of honest citizens were common. In one case a couple had given all their money to go free, when the real gang coming up made booty of both parties, and had them aboard in no time. The quarrymen at Denny Bowl, sixty strong, were heard to brag in their cups what _they_ would do did the press-gang dare to molest _them_, whereupon "three merry girls" got into breeches, put cockades in their hats, took sword and pistol, and advanced, when the quarrymen ran like hares. And to conclude, there is the legend of the gang that raided "The Cock and Rummer" in Bow Street. They seized the cook. The customers, fearing for their dinner, or themselves, rushed to the rescue. Long the strife hung dubious, when the constable (he ought to have been a Bow Street runner) stalked in. The gang, with a fine sense of humour, let the cook go, seized _him_, and away at a great rate, though not fast enough to get clear.

SUMPTUARY LAWS

"Act of Parliament" is a term apt to mislead. To-day it is enforced by so powerful a machinery that practice conforms to precept; but in mediæval England much law was dead letter. Statutes were often mere admonitions; they expressed but an ideal, a pious intention. This was specially true of the Sumptuary Laws, whereby the dress and food of the king's subjects were nicely regulated. If you turn over a book of costumes you find that man's attire has varied more than woman's. The sorts and conditions of men were marked by rigid lines. This fact was shown forth in their dress, and that again re-acted on their modes of thought and habits of life. "Men's apparel," says Edmund Spenser, "is commonly marked according to their condition, and their conditions are often-times governed by their garment, for the person that is gowned is by his gown put in mind of gravity, and also restrained from lightness by the very unaptness of his Tweed." Of old time man's dress was rich and varied, but how to catch its vanished effect? In Courts of Justice there is still the splendid, if occasional, bravery of the judge. See the same man in private, gaze on divinity disrobed, and the disenchantment measures for you what is lost in the splendid garb of other days. In mediæval Europe the Church first condemned a too ornate appearance. Thus, under our early Norman Kings, long hair was much in vogue. In 1104 Bishop Serlo, preaching before Henry I. and his Court in Normandy, attacked this fashion roundly, compared his hearers to "filthy goats," and moved them by his eloquence to tears of contrition. He saw and seized that softer hour. Descending from the pulpit he then and there clipped the polls of them that heard him till he must fain sheath his shears for lack of argument. This rape of the locks was followed by a royal edict against long hair. Alas! for this story. Rochester Cathedral still bears the effigies of Henry and Maud his queen; each is adorned even as Absalom, and Time, whilst it has mauled their faces in cruel fashion, has with quaint irony preserved intact those stone tresses.

Two centuries pass ere the Sumptuary Laws proper begin. The 10 Edward III. c. 3 (1336) ordered that no man was to have more than two courses at dinner, nor more than two kinds of meat, with potage in each course; but on eighteen holidays in the year the lieges might stuff at will. Next Parliament common folk were forbidden to wear furs; but the 37 Edward III. was the great session for such work, made needful (it was thought) by the sudden increase of luxury from the plunder of the French wars. Some half-dozen Acts prescribed to each rank, from peers to ploughmen, its wear; nay, the very price of the stuff was fixed; whilst all wives were to garb themselves according to their husbands' means--a pious wish, repeated a century afterwards, in an Act of the Scots James II. The veils of the baser sort were not to cost more than 12d. apiece: embroidery or silk was forbidden to servants, and these were to eat of flesh or fish but once a day. Cloth merchants were to make stuff enough, and shopkeepers to have stock enough, to supply the anticipated demand. Such apparel as infringed the statute was forfeit to the king. The knight's dress will serve for sample of what was required. It was to be cloth of silver, with girdles reasonably embellished with silver, and woollen cloth of the value of six marks the piece. Under Richard II. monstrous sleeves were much affected. A monkish scribe inveighs bitterly against these "pokys, like bag-pipes." Some hung down to the knees; yea, even to the feet. Servants were as bad as their masters! When potage is brought to table, "the sleeves go into them and get the first taste." Nay, they are "devil's receptacles," since anything stolen is safely lodged therein. And so a statute of the time prohibited any man below a banneret from wearing large hanging sleeves, open or closed.

The fashion changed to _dagges_, a term explained by the 8th of Henry IV., which forbade "gown or garment cut or slashed into pieces in the form of letters, rose-leaves, and posies of various kinds, or any such devices." The fantastic peaked shoes of the fifteenth century, sometimes only held up by a chain from the girdle, were fair mark for the lawgiver, and under Edward IV. no less person than a lord was allowed peaks exceeding two inches. An Act in the same reign banned the costly head-gear of women. Henry VIII. saw to men's garb as well as their beliefs. His first Parliament forbade costly apparel, and there is preserved in the Record Office a letter from Wolsey enclosing to the King, at his request, the Act of Apparel, with an abstract, for examination and correction. Exemptions were not unknown: thus, in 1517, Henry Conway of Bermondsey obtained license to wear "camlet, velvet, and sarcenet, satin and damask, of green, black, or russet colour in his clothing." Under Queen Mary common folk who wore silk on "hat, bonnet, girdle, scabbard, hose, shoes, or spur-leathers," were grievously amerced. Under Elizabeth the regulations were numberless: thus there is an act for "uttering of caps, and for true making of hats and caps." No one was to engage in this business unless he had been "a prentice or covenant servant" by the space of seven years. No one under the degree of knight was to wear a cap of velvet. But these were not pure sumptuary regulations: they were for protection of home industries. A statute of the previous reign had declared that no man was to buy more than twelve hats or caps, be it out of this realm; and a previous Act of Elizabeth had strangely provided that if anyone sold foreign apparel on credit for longer than eight days to persons not having £3000 a year he should be without legal remedy against his debtor.

On the 15th June 1574, an elaborate proclamation complained of "the wasting and undoying of a great number of young gentlemen" who were "allured by the vayne shewe of those thyngs." A schedule was appended in which the costumes prescribed for all sorts and conditions of men were set forth. In the Star Chamber on June 12th, 1600, my Lord Keeper gravely admonished the judges to look to all sorts of abuses--"Solicitors and pettifoggers," "Gentlemen that leave hospitality and housekeeping and hide in cities and borough towns," "Masterless men that live by their sword and their wit, meddlers in princes' matters and libellers," and last, but not least, "to the vanity and excess of woman's apparel." All was in vain, if we are to believe the fierce invective of Stubb's _Anatomie of Abuses_. "There is now," he groans, "such a confused mingle-mangle of apparel, and such preposterous excess thereof as every one is permitted to flaunt it out in whatever apparel he listeth himself, or can get by any kind of means." It was horrible to hear that shirts were sold at £10 a piece, and "it is a small matter now to bestow twenty nobles, ten pound, twenty pound, forty pound, yea, a hundred pound, of one pair of breeches (God be merciful to us!)" After this aught else were anti-climax, and so for the women he can only say they were worse than the men. A new order of things came in with the next reign, for the act Jac. I. c. 25, sec. 45, repealed at one stroke all statutes against apparel. In Scotland they kept up the game some time longer, but one need not pursue the subject there, though a curious statute of the Scots James II. (1457) must have a word. It provided that "na woman cum to Kirk nor mercat with her face mussled that she may nocht be kenn'd under the pain of escheit of the curchie" (forfeiture of the hood). In Ireland there was a law (says Spenser) which "forbiddeth any to weare theyre beardes on the upper lip and none under the chinn:" another "which putteth away saffron shirtes and smockes," and so forth; but these were of English importation.

In the North American colonies sumptuary legislation has a history of its own. In Massachusetts an edict of September 1639, declaims against the "much waste of the good creatures (not the tipplers, but the tipple) by the vain drinking of healths," which practice is straightway forbidden. Excess or bravery of apparel is condemned, and no one is to wear a dress "with any lace on it, silver, gold silk, or thread under the penalty of forfeiture." Again, it is provided that children or servants are not to have ornamental apparel. Here is an individual case. Robert Coles, in March 1634, for drunkenness is disfranchised and condemned for a whole year to "wear about his neck, and so to hang upon his outward garment a D made of red cloth and set upon white"--a very unromantic scarlet letter! These things, too, passed away, but in the Maine Liquor Law of 1851, one traces the revival of the old idea. In England the thing lived not again. Under the Commonwealth public opinion enforced a "sober garb." Charles II. had some idea of a national costume, but he was too wise or too careless to attempt legislation. In 1747 the wearing of the Highland dress was forbidden, but that was policy, just as centuries before the Jews had a special garb ordained for them. Also a number of laws were passed to promote home manufactures: so under Charles I. and Charles II. the entry of foreign bone-lace was prohibited, though the second monarch granted licence for importing same to John Eaton for the use of the royal family. It would also serve, he coolly remarked, for patterns. There is one other curious example. Too much foreign linen was used, and so the 30th of Charles II. c. 3 ordered the dead (save the plague-stricken) to be buried in woollen shrouds. The relatives must file an affidavit with the clergyman as to this, and £5 was the fine for _him_ if he neglected his part. Did the vision of that unseemly shroud really disturb poor Nance Oldfield's last moments, as Pope would have us believe?

"Odious! in woollen! 'twould a saint provoke!"
Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke.
"No: let a charming chintz and Brussels lace
Wrap my cold limbs and shade my lifeless face!"

"Narcissa" had her wish: the "Brussels lace" of her head-dress, her "Holland shift," a "pair of new kid gloves on her cold hands," were the talk of the town; so they tricked her out for Westminster Abbey.

Almost up to Waterloo the Act lingered on the Statute Book, till some ingenious rascal brought an action against various clergymen for the £5 penalty, for that they had not certified to churchwardens the cases of non-compliance. And so, in 1814, the 54th George III. c. 108 swept away the strange provision.

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TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

Text in italics is surrounded with underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation have been
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