Peper and sayforne they gan me bede,- Then to the Chepe I gan me drawne, Where mutch people I sawe for to stande ; One ofred me velvet, sylke, and lawne, An other he taketh me by the hande, 'Here is Parys thred the fynest in the lande :" I never was vsed to such thynge in dede,— And wantyng mony I myght not spede. Then went I forth by London Stone ; Then comes me one, cryed "hot shepes feete ;" One cryde "makerell rysher greene," an other gan greete ; One bad me by a hood to cover my head,- Then I hyed me into Estchepe, 66 One cryes "rybbs of befe," and many a pye;" Pewter pottes they clattered on a heape ; There was harpe, pype, and mynstrelsye; "Yea, by cock! nay, by cock!" some began crye; Some songe of Jenken and Julyan for there mede,But for lack of mony I myght not spede. Then into Cornhyll anon I yode, Where was mvtch stolen gere amonge, I saw where hong myne owne hoode, I knew it well as I did my crede,— The Taverner tooke me by the sleve, 66 "S" sayth he, "will you o" wyne assay Then hyed I me to Belynsesgate, And one cryed, "Hoo, go we hence?" That he wold spare me my expence : Then I convayd me unto Kent, Ffor of the law wold I meddle no more; I dyght me to do as I dyd before:- MANNERS OF THE LONDONERS. In Holinshed's "Description of Britain," it is stated, that the hospitable reception given to the Londoners by their Country friends was not always returned with equal graciousness; on which, “the old countrie clerkes framed this saeing." Primus jucundus, Tolerabilis estque secundus ; Tertius est vanus, Sed fatet quatridianus:— which lines were thus paraphrased by the late J. P. Andrews, F.A.S.* Four days to spend With asking friend, In London fair, I reckoned: The first in glee Past merrily, Not quite so well the second. The third cold day I saw display A congé so explicit, I left the place Nor gave him space To bid me end my visit. MOORFIELDS-ELIZABETH CANNING. In the year 1753-4, the public attention in London was almost exclusively occupied by the extraordinary case of Elizabeth Canning, the true particulars of whose story have never, even to the present hour, been fully ascertained. She was a girl of low birth, about eighteen years of age, and in the service of a Mr. Lyon, of Aldermanbury, to whose house she was returning on the evening of New-Year's Day, (from a visit to her uncle at Salt-Petre Bank, near Rosemary Lane,) when, according to her own testimony, she was seized under Bedlam, or Bethlem wall, in Moorfields, by two men, who, after robbing her of her money, gown, and apron, stopped her mouth with a gag, * Vide, "History of Great Britain," Vol. ii. p. 286; 3d ed. and dragged her as far as Enfield Wash, to the house of an old woman, called Mother Wells. Here, on her refusal to submit to prostitution, she was robbed of her stays, and confined for twenty-eight days in a kind of hay-loft, without fire, or any kind of sustenance, except some stale pieces of bread, amounting to about a quartern loaf, and a gallon jug full of water. At last, when nearly starved to death, she effected her escape by breaking through a window, and shivering with hunger and nakedness, found her way back to her mother's house, near Moorgate. Such was the substance of her story, which, notwithstanding its improbability, being seemingly corroborated by the weak and miserable condition in which she returned home, had a surprising effect on the popular mind, and large subscriptions were raised for the purpose of discovering and bringing to exemplary punishment the guilty wretches who had thus maltreated her. At that time, she knew not where the house was situated in which she had been immured, nor could she describe it any otherwise than by saying, that through the chinks, or crevices, of the loft, she had seen the Hertford stage-coach pass along the adjacent road. When sufficiently recovered, she was taken in a chaise to the abode of Mother Wells, who was known to be a woman of ill-fame, the harbourer of gypsies and prostitutes, and whose house, by a singular chance, had been mentioned as the probable place of the girl's confinement, by a person who became one of the witnesses on the subsequent trial. The upper room, or loft, in this dwelling, varied considerably from that which had been described by Elizabeth Canning, yet she declared it was the place in which she had been kept a prisoner. She then fixed upon an aged gypsy-woman, named Mary Squires, as the person who had cut the stays off her back, and accused a young woman, called Virtue Hall, with being present at the time: both those females had very remarkable countenances, and were then Mother Wells's inmates. At the ensuing Sessions in the Old Bailey, Mary Squires and Mother Wells were indicted for felony ; and, though many contradictions appeared in the evidence of Canning and her witnesses, the former was sentenced to die, and the latter to be branded, and imprisoned in Newgate for six months. This verdict, though perfectly congenial with the ferment among the populace, was by no means satisfactory to the more discerning faculties of Sir Crispe Gascoyne, the Lord Mayor, who, in an address to the Liverymen, stated his conviction that further inquiry was necessary, the "outrages of the mob," and " the antecedent prejudices in men's minds," having destroyed that "solemn and sacred freedom which should attend upon all trials," and prevented the requisite consideration from being given to the "contradictory evidence adduced upon this." That Sir Crispe's address may be better understood, it should be remarked here, that, during the trial, the witnesses for Squires were either so overawed by the rabble that they durst not appear in court, or otherwise so in |