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once a woman's heart is unhappily set upon strange men, bars and chains will not prevent their guilty intercourse.

"Good wives shall, at death, be born again unto the world of Daivers, and there assist at the heavenly feasts and processions.

"The man whose wife is not correct in her demeanour cannot, like a lion, fearlessly face those who slander and contemn him.

"The highest bliss on earth, consists in possessing a faithful wife and obedient children."

FUNERAL ORATION OF FRANCIS THE FIRST.

PIERRE DUCHATEL, in a funeral oration on the death of Francis I. published 1547, took upon himself to affirm, that the soul of the king had gone direct to Paradise. This passing over of purgatory gave offence to the doctors of the Sorbonne, who sent a deputation to warn him of his error. The prelate being absent, one of his friends received them, and, in reply, gaily said " Be not uneasy, gentlemen, every one knows that the late king, my master, never stopped long in any one place, however agreeable. Supposing, then, that he went to purgatory, be assured that his stay would be very short." This pleasantry disarmed the severity of the doctors, and the affair went no farther.

THE JESUITS.

BLANDIUS AQUAVIVA, general of the Society of the Jesuits, published at Rome, in 1686, a work entitled "Method and Institutes of the Studies of the Society of Jesus." The book has become excessively rare, because, being denounced as heretical to the Inquisition by the whole body of Dominicans, it was condemned as such by that tribunal. The reason of its suppression was, that in a chapter "On the choice of opinions in the exercise of theses," advice is given to follow St. Thomas, but with the exception of a few points. For instance, it is said, "we are not obliged to believe, with St. Thomas, that second causes, when they act, have God for their immediate and moving cause." In the second edition, the Jesuits were obliged to omit that chapter, though in the preface they express their hope that they may be allowed, at some future time, to give it. In all the subsequent editions, however, neither preface nor chapter durst ever make their appearance.

MAID OF BALDOCK'S MILL.

THE real name of this celebrated rustic beauty was Mary Cornwall. She has been dead about fifty years, and her remains lie buried in Baldock church-yard. She had at one time four lovers,-" the grave and the gay, the clown and the beau." The "grave" lover was a young clergyman; and it was he who wrote the song of "The Maid of Baldock's Mill," which soon became so popular, that the maid was obliged for many years to avoid the neighbouring market-places and fairs, where it was constantly sung by ballad-singers.

It appears that the divine, though he might have been the most learned, was not the favoured lover. The "Maid of Baldock's Mill" married Henry Leonard, a carpenter, of Baldock. Her father only gave her a portion of £100 or £150, so that she was indebted entirely to her beauty and worth for her celebrity. The following is the song, once so popular:

"Who has e'er been at Baldock must needs know the mill,
At the sign of the horse, at the foot of the hill;
Where the grave and the gay, the clown and the beau,
Without all distinction promiscuously go.

The man of the mill had a daughter so fair,
With so pleasing a shape and so winning an air,
That once on the hay-field's green bank as I stood,
I thought she was Venus just sprung from the flood.

But, looking again, I perceiv'd my mistake,
For Venus, though fair, has the look of a rake;
While nothing but virtue and modesty fill
The more beautiful looks of the lass of the mill.

Prometheus stole fire, as the poets do say,
To enliven the mass he had modelled of clay;
Had Mary been with him, the beam of her eye
Had saved him the trouble of robbing the sky.

Since first I beheld this dear lass of the mill,
I can never be quiet, do what I will;
All day and all night I sigh and sit still;
I shall die, if I have not the lass of the mill.”

"BAYLE'S DICTIONARY."

As soon as this celebrated work appeared, it was denounced by Jurieu to the consistory of the Flemish church; and it would to a certainty have been suppressed, had not Bayle promised to correct the faults with which he was charged. It was required of him, 1. That he should withdraw all the obscenities; 2. That he should change entirely the article of David; 3. That he should refute the Manicheans, instead of giving force to their objections and arguments; 4. That he should not make the Pyrrhonists and Pyrrhonism triumph, and that he should alter the article of Pyrrho; 5. That he should not give extravagant praises to Atheists and Epicureans; and 6. That he should not employ the Holy Scriptures to make indecent allusions. It appears that Bayle was in no haste to fulfil his promise, for in the subsequent editions he made no considerable change, except in the article David. The best edition of his Dictionary is that published at Rotterdam, in 4 vols. fol. 1720. Next to it in value is that published at Amsterdam, 4 vols. fol. 1730, with additions by Prosper Marchand.

SINGULAR TENURES.

BEFORE the establishment of the feudal system, the possessions of the people were perfectly allodial-that is, wholly independent, and held of no superior at all; but by the feudal constitution, large parcels of land were allotted by the conquering generals to the superior officers, and by them dealt out again in smaller parcels to the inferior officers and most deserving soldiers, who were all bound to each other for reciprocal protection and defence. In consequence of this system, it became a fundamental maxim (though, in reality, a mere fiction,) of our English tenures,-"that the king is the universal lord and original proprietor of all the land in the kingdom; and that no man doth, or can, possess any part of it, but what has mediately or immediately been derived as a gift from him, to be held upon feudal services." Those that held immediately under the crown were called the king's tenants in capite, or in chief, which was the most honourable species of tenure; those who, in a lower degree of feudatory subordination, held of their lords, were subject to services of a more slavish nature.

These services gradually grew into a slavery so complicated and extensive, as to call aloud for redress; and, at length, by

an act made in the twelfth year of the reign of Charles II. the whole were levelled at one blow; every oppressive tenure being abolished, except only tenures in frank almoin (lands held by a religious corporation from the giver in free alms,) copyholds, and the honorary services of grand serjeantry. The tenure of grand serjeantry, thus retained and still existing, is, when the tenant is bound, instead of serving the king generally in his wars, to do some special honorary service to the king in person; as, to carry his banner, his sword, or the like; or to be his champion, his butler, &c. at the coronation. Petit serjeantry bears a great resemblance to grand serjeantry, and consists in holding lands of the king, by the service of rendering to him, annually, some small implement of war, as a bow, or sword; a lance, an arrow, &c.

King John gave several lands, at Kepperton and Atterton, in Kent, to Solomon Attefeld, to be held by this singular service, that as often as the king should be pleased to cross the sea, the said Solomon, or his heirs, should be obliged to go with him, to hold his majesty's head, if there should be occasion for it, "that is, if he should be sea-sick;" and it appears, by the record in the Tower, that this same office of head-holding was actually performed in the reign of Edward the First.

William, earl of Warren, lord of Stamford, in the time of king John, while standing upon the castle walls, saw two bulls fighting in the castle meadow, till all the butcher dogs pursued one of the bulls (maddened with the noise of the multitude) quite through the town. The sight pleased the earl so much, that he gave the castle meadows, where the duel of the bulls began, for a common to the butchers of the town, after the first grass was mowed, on condition that they should find a mad bull, the day six weeks before Christmas-day, for the continuance of that sport for ever.

John de Roches held the manor of Winterslew, in the county of Wilts, by this agreeable sort of service," that when the king abode at Clarendon, he should come to the palace of the king there, and go into the butlery, and draw out of any vessel he should find in the said butlery, at his choice, as much wine as should be needful for making a pitcher of claret, which he should make at the king's charge; and that he should serve the king with a cup, and should have the vessel from whence he took the wine, with all the remainder of the wine left in the vessel, together with the cup from whence the king should drink that claret."

The town of Yarmouth is bound by charter to send to the sheriffs of Norwich a hundred herrings, which are to be baked in twenty-four pies or pasties, and then delivered to the

lord of the manor of East Carlton, who is to convey them to the king. And Eustace de Corson, Thomas de Berkedich, and Robert de Wethen, held thirty acres of land in the town of Carlton, in the county of Norfolk, by the serjeantry of carrying to the king, wherever he should be in England, twenty-four pasties of fresh herrings at their first coming in.

The lands called Pollard's Lands, at Bishop's Auckland, as also the manor of Sockburn, which belonged anciently to the family of Conyers, but came, in 1771, into the possession of Sir Edward Blackett, are held of the bishop of Durham, by the easy service of presenting a falchion to every bishop on his first entrance into his diocese.

Dr. Johnson, of Newcastle, met the bishop, Dr. Egerton, in September 1771, on his first arrival at Bishop's Auckland, and presented the falchion on his knee, thus addressing his lordship, according to the old form of words: "My lord! in behalf of myself, as well as of the several other tenants of Pollard's Lands, I do humbly present your lordship with this falchion, at your first coming here, wherewith, as the tradition goeth, Pollard slew, of old, a great and venomous serpent, which did much harm to man and beast: and, by the performance of this service, these lands are holden." The tenure of Sockburn originated in a similar service said to have been performed by the great ancestors of the Conyers' family. It would seem that the county of Durham was, in ancient times, as the old women say, "much troubled with worms."

A farm, at Brook-house, in Langsett, in the parish of Peniston, and county of York, paid yearly to Godfrey Bosville, Esq. or his representative, a snow-ball at Midsummer, and a red rose at Christmas. However extraordinary this tenure may appear, yet there is little doubt that it was very possible to perform the service, as snow is frequently found in caverns or hollows upon the high mountains in the neighbourhood of Peniston, in the month of June. The red rose at Christmas was most probably one preserved until that time of the year but, as the things presented in tenures were usually such as could be procured with tolerable facility, and not those which would occasion difficulty, it is probable that the snow and the red rose were redeemable by a pecuniary payment fixed, at the will of the lord.

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