in that slashing age, did commonly bang one another's bucklers. Then an esquire when he rode to town, was attended by eight or ten men in blue coats with badges. The lords—then lords in deed as well as title-lived in their countries like petty kings,-had jura regalia belonging to their seignories, had their castle and boroughs, and sent burgesses to the Lower House; had gallows within their liberties, where they could try, condemn, draw and hang; never went to London but in parliamenttime, or once a year to do their homage and duty to the king. The lords of manors kept good houses in their countries, did eat in their Gothick halls at the high table— in Scotland still the architecture of a lord's house is thus, viz. a great open hall, a kitchen and buttery, a parlour, over which a chamber for my lord and lady; all the rest lye in common, viz. the men-servants in the hall, the women in a common room, or oriele, the folk at the side tables—oriele is an ear, but here it signifies a little room at the upper end of the hall, where stands a square or round table, perhaps in the old times was an oratory; in every old Gothick hall is one. The meat was served up by watch-words. Jacks are but an invention of the other age; the poor boys did turn the spits, and licked the dripping-pan, and grew to be huge, lusty knaves. The beds of the servants and retainers were in the great halls, as now in the guard-chamber, &c. The hearth was commonly in the middle, as at most colleges, whence the saying, Round about our Coal-fire. Here in the halls were the mummings, cob-loaf stealing, and great number of old Christmas plays performed. Every baron and gentleman of estate kept great horses for a man at arms. Lords had their armories to furnish some hundreds of men. The halls of justices of the peace were dreadful to behold; the skreens were garnish'd with corslets and

helmets gaping with open mouth, with coats of mail, lances, pikes, halberts, brown bills, batterdashers, bucklers, and the modern calivers and petronils (in King Charles the First's time) turned into muskets and pistols. Then were entails in fashion, a good prop for monarchy. Destroying of manours began temp. Henry VIII. but now common; whereby the mean people live lawless, nobody to govern them, they care for no body, having no dependance on any body. By this method, and by the selling of the church lands, is the ballance of the government quite altered and put into the hands of the common people. No ale-houses, nor yet inns, were there then, unless upon great roads. When they had a mind to drink they went to the fryaries; and when they travell'd, they had entertainment at the religious houses for three days, if occasion so long requir'd. The meeting of the gentry was not then at tipling houses, but in the fields or forests, with their hawks and hounds, with their bugle-horns in silken bordries.* This part (north of Wiltshire) very much abounded with forests and parks. Thus were good spirits kept up, and good horses and hides made; whereas now the gentry of the nation are so effeminated by coaches, they are so far from managing great horses, that they know not how to ride hunting-horses, besides the spoiling of several trades dependant. In the last age every yeoman almost kept a sparrow-hawk; and it was a divertisement for young gentlewomen to manage sparrow-hawks and merlins.

*

"In King Henry the Eighth's time one Dame Julian↑

Borderies, i.e. BALDRICKS, or girdles; but I do not remember having ever met with the word so spelt before.

+This, I presume, alludes to a work by Juliana Berners, or Barnes, prioress of Sopwell, near St. Albans. If so, Aubrey is not quite correct in his account of it, for it is only the portion, called the GESTYS

writ the art of hawking which is in English verse, which is in Wilton library. This country was then a lovely champain, as that about Sheeston and Cots-wold; very few enclosures unless near houses. In my remembrance much hath been enclos'd, and every year more and more is taken in. Anciently the leghs-now corruptly called slaights-i. e. pastures, were noble large grounds. Then were a world of labouring people maintained by the plough, as yet in Northamptonshire, &c. There were no rates for the poor in my grandfather's days; but for Kingston St. Michael (no small parish) the church-ale at Whitsuntide did the business. In every parish is, or was, a church-house, to which belong'd spits, crocks, &c., utensils for dressing provision. Here the housekeepers met and were merry, and gave their charity. The young people were there too, and had dancing, bowling, shooting at butts &c., the ancients sitting gravely by and looking on. All things were civil and without scandal. This church-ale is doubtless derived from the ayamai or love-feasts, mention'd in the New Testament. Mr. A. Wood assures me that there were no alms-houses, at least they were very scarce, before the Reformation; that over against Christ Church, Oxon, is one of the ancientest. In every church was a poor man's box, but I never remember'd the use of it; nay, there was one at great inns, as I remember it was before the wars. Before the Reformation, at their vigils or revels, they sate up all night fasting and praying. The night before the day of the dedication of the church, certain officers were chosen for gathering the money for charitable

OF VENERY, that is in verse. It is a black-letter volume printed by Wynkyn de Worde, with the lengthy title of "Treaty ses perteynynge to Hawkynge and Huntynge; with other dyvers playsant matters, belongynge unto Noblesse: &c. &c." Folio. Westmestre, 1496.

uses. Since the Reformation and inclosures aforesaid these parts have swarm'd with poor people."*

The pith of this extract, so far as concerns our present purpose, is no doubt, that part which is given in italics; but it is altogether curious as a picture of the old times, over which Aubrey laments with so much unction, stigmatizing every improvement as the root of all evil.-To return to our Whitsuntide.

It seems to be agreed on all hands, that the word ale, to which allusion has so often been made above, means a festival, and indeed, its occurrence in the compound words bride-ale, church-ale, sometimes called quarter-ale, leet-ale, scot-ale, lamb-ale, clerk-ale, give-ale, sufficiently proves that this was its general use and meaning.† But it appears to have been employed somewhat laxly, as in general is the case with words that are most popularly used. Thus in the following passage we see clearly enough, that it means

* Aubrey's Miscellanies on Several Curious Subjects, p. 28. 8vo. 1714. Scot-ales were, as the word imports, ales or feasts, maintained by the joint contributions of the revellers, and were generally held in houses of public resort. Leet-ales were feasts held at the leets or manorial courts, and probably the drink-lean, mentioned above, signified much the same thing. Quarter-ales or church-ales, would seem to have been established to help out the funds for the repairing of chapels, as appears from the following quotation from Sir R. Worsley's History of the Isle of Wight (p. 210.)—“If the quarter shall need at any time to make a quarter-ale or church-ale for the maintenance of the chapel." The Clerks-ale took place in the Easter holydays, and was, as Warton tells us (Hist. of Eng. Poetry, vol. iii. p.128), "for the clerk's private benefit and the solace of the neighbourhood;" or in other words, it was a mode of collecting his dues and eking out his salary. The Give-ales were feasts of an entirely gratuitous nature, whereas all the former may to a certain extent, be called compulsory; they arose out of legacies and donations, and being generally blended with religious objects-such as masses for the dead, lighting the altar of some particular saint, &c.—they were at first dispensed in the church, and still more frequently in the church-yard.

the brewage itself, which was especially made for some particular festival. "The parishioners of Elveston and Okebrook, in Derbyshire, agree jointly to brew four ales, and every ale of one quarter of malt, betwixt this and the feast of St. John the Baptist next coming. And that every inhabitant of the said town of Okebrook shall be at the several ales. And every husband and his wife shall pay two-pence, every cottager one penny; and all the inhabitants of Elveston, shall have and receive all the profits and advantages coming of the said ales to the use and behoof of the said church of Elveston." *

From all this it seems to me quite clear that ale, which now is restricted to mean the liquor only, except in composition, originally signified a festival, and that the brewage from malt got its name from being the established drink at those festivals. As to its derivation, I feel as confident as any one has a right to be on so difficult a subject, that it is only a corruption of yule, as yule itself is of huly, and my supposition is farther strengthened by the fact of yale being a common pronunciation of ale in some of our provinces.

Restoration-Day-The 29th of May was at one time celebrated as being the anniversary both of the birth and the restoration of Charles II. The king's statue, which stood in the centre of the old Royal Exchange, used to be decked out with boughs of oak, and in the north it is still customary for the lower classes to wear oak leaves in their hats, to commemorate Charles's escape from his pursuers by hiding in an oak. At Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the boys of one faction have a taunting rhyme of

'Royal oak

The Whigs to provoke ;"

* See the Archæologia, vol. xii. p. 13. The writer however quotes from Warton.