rectness. We may add, too, that many of the registers about this period begin with the words, initium regni dominæ nostræ Elizabethæ reginæ, Nov. 17th, 1559,' or 1560, as it might be, the figures referring not to the year, but the day of her accession, which was called the Queen's day,' just as the day of the accession of James I. was called the 'King's day.'

Very interesting are some of the entries at this time. Take the following from Framlingham Earl, Norfolk:

1588, the 19th of Nov. was a day of thanksgiving to God for the great and wonderful overthrow of the Spanish navy, which came to fight the Pope's battle against this island for their gospel; at which overthrow the very enemies were so astonished that some of them said Christ was become a Lutheran, and all that saw it did say it was the Lord's work; so this day was appointed by our Church to be spent throughout the realm in preachinge, praying, singing of psalms and giving thanks, for a thankful memorial of the Lord's merciful mercies yerely.*

And if we remember rightly, 'preacher' Baker wrote in the register of Carisbrook, at Magdalentide: the great and dread Armada of the Spaniards is now passing the back of the Wight,' and proceeds to offer up a prayer for their destruction. We have little doubt that in many other registers along the Channel-coast might be found some singular entries written by men who must have seen the hulls of the Spanish fleet driving down the Channel before the wind from the church towers, where during the day the alarm-bells rung, and at night the cresset-fires blazed. At Paul, in Cornwall, we meet with a curious item, that the registers previous to 1595 were burnt by the Spaniards when they set

fire to the church. At Wadhurst, in Sussex, there is an account of Van Trompe's victory over the Spanish fleet off Deal, in 1639;† and again at Eastbourne, in the same county, is there an allusion to one of the many French invasions along the coast; whilst at Letterston, and also at Landwunda, Pembrokeshire, the registers were destroyed at the time of the French invasion, 1797.

But it is in the London registers that we shall find most matter illustrative of the social life of the sixteenth century. Take, for instance, the register of St. Dunstan's in the West. Here is a picture of the state of the poor :

1573. Jan. 5th.-A poore man buryed out of the fielde.

1586. Feb. 9th.-A maide buryed out of the fielde.

1589. March 18th.-A poor maide that died in the fieldes.

1593. Nov. 20th.-A childe that died in the fielde.

And so on through numerous

entries of women confined in the fieldes,' which then surrounded Lincoln's-inn, where the poor creatures sought shelter; for by a mistaken policy, any increase of building was vigilantly put down by law. The very cellars were overcrowded, and we find people dying in the barns, and even in the streets.§ But as early as 1557, the severe distress which was prevalent is shown by the touching entries in St. Margaret's, Westminster, of 'died of very poverty,' ' of very famine,' after the name. Another noticeable feature is the number of foundlings, 'base-born,' 'child of the parish, as they are entered, and to whom such pathetic names as Relictus, or Charity, or Patience, were given by the churchwardens or clergyman. Nor must we pass over the

It is, however, satisfactory to find that during the troubles of the first part of the Civil War, the Parliament did not lose sight of the value of registers. In 1644, we find that a special enactment is made for keeping 'a fair Registerbook of vellum;' but it was not till 1653, when affairs were more settled, that Cromwell directed lay registrars to be chosen by every parish, for registering births and burials, baptisms being omitted, which will explain the great decrease of entries of baptisms during the Commonwealth. And this is only one of the many instances in which Cromwell anticipated modern legislation. The policy of substituting births for baptisms is obvious, and like the simple declaration that the parties took each other for man and wife, has since become the law of the land. But it was in ordering the certificates of marriages to be kept amongst the records of the sessions, that Cromwell showed his knowledge of the infirmities of human nature, and his sense of the value of such documents. By the same act it was ordered that all who wished to be married should send in their names to the registrar 'on three holydays at the public meeting place called the church or chapel, or, if preferred, the marketplace, and upon receiving the certificate of the due performance of this ceremony they could be married before a magistrate.*

These changes of course gave great offence to the royalist ministers. But by and bye came the Restoration, and fresh pens wrote in the registers; and we now read how Charles the Seconde returned into London againe the twelfth year of his Majestie's reigne;'t and how the poor Nonconformist ministers in their turn were cast adrift upon the world. The Act of Uniformity passed the 19th of May,

1662, and they were ordered to quit their benefices on the ensuing 24th of August, the Feast of Bartholomew. Two thousand preached their farewell sermons the Sunday before. A few conformed; the rest went on their ways preaching and teaching what they believed to be the truth, in spite of imprisonment and fines.

In 1665, the plague mark reappears in the London registers. In many parishes the people died in such multitudes that they could not be entered. Clergymen and parish authorities in many instances were all swept away, as the gaps testify. Here and there occur burried entries roughly stating how many died; adding, perhaps, that the churchyard could no longer hold them, and that they were buried out in the fields. And next year came the Great Fire, purifying the gorged and filthy town. People carried their furniture and valuables into the open churches; but in vain, for the fire swallowed them too, and as the flames approached, the registers had to be carried from place to place for safety; and in some of the Churchwardens' accounts, as of St. Benedict's, Gracechurch-street, we find the expenses of removing them; and in the registers themselves we meet with entries of poor people born in the mansions of the rich, who had thrown open their houses to the homeless and destitute multitudes.

In Charles II.'s reign the wooltrade the staple trade of the land -began still further to decline, and an Act was passed for 'burying in woollen;' and the affidavits to that effect are frequently to be met with in the registers. The law was rigidly enforced, for we find in the churchwardens' books memoranda for distraining upon the dead person's goods, if the

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proper affidavit had not been made. The rich, though, as Armado would say, 'objected to go woolward for penance,' and by paying could be buried as they pleased. 'Odious!' cries Pope's Narcissa,

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.'

And these thoughts were not confined to the actress alone, and we therefore often come across such entries as in the Camberwell Register: 'Peter Scott, LL.D., buried in linnen-508. to ye poore;' and in many of the churchwardens' books, as at Strood, in Kent, will be found the payments of the fines to the poor.

Here we must close our extracts. Enough has been said, we hope, to prove how rich are our parish registers in materials for illustrating our English history. Briefly let us add, that in the registers will often be found the original grants of charities, entries concerning the vicarage and lands of the Church, Easter offerings, and copy of the terrier.* In them the reader will meet with the beautiful expression

resignavit,' applied to a man's death as then giving up the stewardship of his life; to be

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equalled only in tenderness by the entry in the old Quaker registers of laid down the body.' He will find too notices of 'chrysom' children; will see how the excommunicated were buried outside the graveyard; will read, how lay baptism was performed over the dying child;t will see, too, the bastard called by such a loving name as the child of God.' He will find himself face to face with the stern facts of the past; he will read how men and women fled across the sea in Queen Marie's dayes, for fear of the persecution that was then for the truth.'§ He will come across our old English superstitions, the burials of witches, and fortune-tellers, and Ægyptians, whom he will recognise in the modern corruption of Gypsies; he will read how people were touched for the king's evil, and bethink him of Samuel Johnson carried when a child to Queen Anne, the last royal physician. ¶ Surely, in all this and much more there is food enough for reflection. He will here find, too, longforgotten acts of charity-subscriptions for the Vaudois, for the Irish exiles, briefs for captives in Algeria, for slaves, for fires, and poor. All these things will meet him in the common parish register. Every page is full of facts which only want the warm heart to give them life.

p. 248.

Filius populi is also very common.

Druzes refer with feelings of pride and ostentation to their Arab origin. They will tell you that many centuries ago their ancestors, magnificent in all the wealth and profusion of roaming herds and exuberant pasturage, approached the mountain ranges, and that in due course of time they exchanged their goats' hair tents for substantial tenements of brick and mortar; and the monotonous and unvarying redundance of the desert, for hills and valleys luxuriating in all the rich and enamelled produce of the fig, the olive, the mulberry, and the vine.

The Jumblatts relate that their forefathers formed a part of the great Arab immigration which, in the ninth century of the Christian era, was led up by Melik il Naaman, from the province of Irak and the neighbourhood of Bagdad and Bussorah, to the mountains near Aleppo; and the various tribes of which built the large city and cultivated the extensive district near that town which, even in its present state of utter desolation and ruin, is known as the 'Maarat Naaman.' By whatever means and at whatever periods the Jumblatts emerged from obscurity, it is certain that as time rolled on they managed to obtain an influential connexion within the walls of Aleppo, for in the sixteenth century the post of governor of Aleppo had become hereditary in their family.

The gradual encroachments, however, of the Ottoman Turks, seeking to monopolize to their own race all places of importance and emolument, while they also trusted to fortunate openings, propitious circumstances, and intrigue, rather than

JUMBLATT.

to brute force, for the accomplishment of their object, told at length on the fortunes of the Jumblatts. Surrounded by political complications, and harassed by exactions, the natural results of Turkish fraud, avarice, and corruption, Ali Jumblatt Pasha, as he was called, broke out into open rebellion against the Sultan in the year 1613, having made common cause with the celebrated Emir Fakaradeen Maan, in his attempt to establish an Arab viceroyalty in Syria. After a somewhat protracted struggle, this last attempt of Arab nationality to resist the intruding element was defeated, and Ali Jumblatt found an asylum with the Maans at Bakleen near Deir el Kammar, in the Lebanon. The traveller may yet see the palace and khan of the Jumblatts at Aleppo. All the family property near that town was confiscated to the Porte.

As a set-off against these losses, the Jumblatts became small landed proprietors amongst the Druzes around Bakleen. In this position they continued until the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the Emir Heider Shehaab, then Grand Prince of the Lebanon, conferred a feudal appanage on the chief of the family, also bearing the name of Ali. This Sheik, though a strict Mussulman, was in high estimation amongst the Druzes, and the Emir Heider was only complying with the popular demand when he invested him with the pelisse of honour and gave him a political jurisdiction. Sheik Ali never varied in his allegiance to his benefactor, and was freely admitted to his confidence. He built a house in the village of Muctara, in the district called the Shoof, which thenceforward became his favourite place of residence. His son, Sheik Kassim, pursued the same cautious policy, and flourished under the sheltering auspices of the Shehaabs.

It was under the son of Kassim, the famous Sheik Bechir Jumblatt, that the family rose to that consideration which it at present enjoys in the Druze confederacy.