bles to search out women of ill fame, and to confine them during Lent, while a still more degenerate class were carted. Evidences of both these habits may be gathered from the following passages. SENSUALITY says in Microcosmos (Act 5)—" But now welcome a cart, or a Shrove Tuesday's Tragedy." Again, in Nabbes' comedy, called TOTTENHAM Court Road, quarto, London, 1638, p. 6—" If I doe, I have lesse mercy than prentices at Shrove tide." Still more striking is a passage in a Satyre against Separatists, quarto, London, 1765; and other passages there are, but somewhat too coarse for the delicacy of modern ears, when vice may be tolerated, but must not be named, and we shall therefore content ourselves with merely referring to them for the gratification of the curious.-Second Part of the Honest Whore," quarto, London, 1630. L. 6. et seq. As to the carting part of the story in the first of the above extracts, though it has been overlooked by Brand and his commentator, to ride in a cart was from very remote times reckoned ignominious; thus, in the old romance of Launcelot de Lac, we are told "en ce temps la estoit accoutumée que Charette estoit si vil que nul' n'estoit dedans qui tout loz et tout honneur n'eust perdu; et quant s'invouloit a aucun tollir honneur si le faisoit s'en monter en un charette; car charette servit en ce temps la de ceque pilloris servent orendroit ; ne en chascune bonne ville n'en avoit, en ce temps la, que une " -in those days it was the custom to consider the cart so base, that no one could be in it without losing all fame and all honour; and when it was wished to deprive any one of his reputation, he was made to mount in a cart; for the cart served at that time for what pillories serve now; nor in those days in each good town was there more than one. Another amusement, if amusement it can be called, and which prevailed both in court and country, was the tying of a cock to a stake, and flinging sticks at the poor bird till it was beaten to death. If well trained it would often elude for a long time the missiles of its persecutors, thereby earning a considerable sum of money for its master; and, when killed, it was put into a hat, and won a second time by the person, who could strike it out. Erasmus accounts for this cruel folly by observing in an ironical tone that the English eat on Shrove Tuesday “quoddam placentæ genus," a certain kind of cake—meaning thereby pancakes—“ quo comesto protinus insaniunt et gallos trucidant;" which being devoured they immediately run mad, and kill the cocks. This brutal custom has been variously derived. Some assert that it originated in an old story of the discovery of an adulterous amour by the crowing of a cock, which we need hardly say is utter nonsense ; others have thought that the cock was thus made to suffer, in punishment for Saint Peter's crime in denying his master, which is no less ridiculous, although we have Sir Charles Sedley's authority for it in the following epigram; "May'st thou be punished for Saint Peter's crime, A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for July 1783, tells us that he had somewhere heard or read of its being an allusion to the indignities offered to Christ by the Jews before his crucifixion. Cranenstein relates an idle story how "when the Danes were masters of England, and lorded it over the natives of the island, the inhabitants of a certain great city, grown weary of their slavery, had formed a secret conspiracy to murder their masters in one bloody night; and twelve men had undertaken to enter the town-house by a stratagem, and seizing the arms surprize the guard, which kept it; and at which time their fellows upon a signal given were to come out of their houses and murder all opposers; but when they were putting it in execution, the unusual crowing and fluttering of the cocks about the place they attempted to enter at, discovered their design, upon which the Danes became so enraged that they doubled their cruelty and used them with more severity than ever. Soon after they were freed from the Danish yoke, and to revenge themselves on the cocks for the misfortune they had involved them in, they instituted this custom of knocking them on the head on Shrove Tuesday, the day on which it happened. This sport, though at first only practiced in one city, in process of time became a national divertisement, and has continued ever since the Danes first lost this island." Were it worth while to refute this absurd version of the geese that by their cackling saved Rome, it might be replied that the Danes never did lose the island, but kept a fast hold of the prey they had once clutched. But the story, like the others before quoted, is sheer nonsense, although they are one and all gravely narrated by Brand, and passed over by Sir Henry Ellis without a comment. On such occasions it is much better to confess our ignorance than to encrease the mass of error by idle conjectures and yet more idle endeavours to enforce them by a display of reading that leaves the question just where it was. Indeed after all that has been said upon the subject it seems more than probable that it originated in the same passion for brutal amusement, that gave rise to bear-baiting, bull-baiting, and so many sports of the same nature. It should be observed too that the practice was not confined to cocks alone, but extended itself to hens and doves, though this was by no means so general. Another amusement of the season was what the people called threshing the fat hen, which is thus explained in Tusser Redivivus. "The hen is hung at a fellow's back, who has also some horse-bells about him; the rest of the fellows are blind-folded, and have boughs in their hands, with which they chase this fellow and his hen about some large court or small enclosure. The fellow with his hen and bells shifting as well as he can, they follow the sound, and sometimes hit him and his hen; other times, if he can get behind one of them, they thresh one another well favouredly; but the jest is, the maids are to blind the fellows, which they do with their aprons, and the cunning baggages will indulge their sweet hearts with a peeping hole, while the others look out as sharp to hinder it. After this the hen is boiled with bacon, and store of pancakes and fritters are (is) made. She, that is noted for lying a-bed long or any other miscarriage, hath the first pan-cake presented to her, which most commonly falls to the dog's share at last, for no one will own it their due." Other sports of a less brutal nature characterized this day. The game of football was at one time common not only among the London apprentices but in all the Northern counties of England. We are told that even so lately as the end of the eighteenth century the town-waits used to go playing to Alnwick Castle every Shrove Tuesday at two o'clock, p. m. when a football was thrown over the castle-wall for the amusement of the populace. At Chester also the same sport must have once prevailed, for King in his Vale Royal of England (p. 194) says that at the city of Chester in the year 1533 "the offerings of ball and foot-ball were put down, and the silver bell offered to the maior on Shrove Tuesday." In Cumberland there was a custom, according to Hutchinson, which we do not remember to have heard of as occurring elsewhere. He says in his history of that country. "Till within the last twenty or thirty years it had been a custom, time out of mind, for the scholars of the free school of Bromfield about the beginning of Lent, or, in the more expressive phraseology of the country, at Fasting's Even, to bar out the master, i. e. to depose and exclude him from his school, and keep him out for three days. During the period of this expulsion, the doors of the citadel, the school, were strongly barricadoed within; and the boys, who defended it like a beseiged city, were armed in general with bore-tree, or elder pop-guns. The master meanwhile made various efforts, both by force and stratagem to regain his lost authority. If he succeeded, heavy tasks were imposed, and the business of the school was resumed and submitted to; but it more commonly happened that he was repulsed and defeated. After three days' siege, terms of capitulation were proposed by the master and accepted by the boys. These terms were summed up in an old formula of Latin Leonine verses stipulating what hours and times should for the year ensuing be allotted to study, and what to relaxation and play. Securities were provided by each side for the due performance of these stipulations, and the paper was then solemnly signed both by master and scholars. The whole was concluded by a festivity, and a treat of cakes and ale furnished by the scholars. : "One of the articles, always stipulated for and granted, was the privilege of immediately celebrating certain games of long standing, viz. foot-ball match and a cock-fight. Captains, as they were called, were then chosen to manage and preside over these games; one from that part of the parish which lay to the westward of the school; the other from the east. Cocks and football players were sought for with great diligence. The party, whose cocks won the most battles, was held as |