in these days; for whereas of old we had breakfasts in the forenoon, beverages or muncheons after dinner, and thereto rear-suppers, when it was time to get rest; now these odd repasts, thanked be God, are very well left, and each one contenteth himself with dinner and supper only." He remarks that "claret and other French wines were despised, and only strong wines in request. The best were to be found in the monasteries; for the merchant would have thought his soul would go straightway to the devil if he should serve monks with other than the best."

In early times, the people were very plain in their household furniture. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, substantial farmers slept on a straw pallet, with a log of wood to rest their head on-a pillow being only thought fit for a woman in child-bed! Indeed, if a man, in the course of seven years after marriage, could purchase a flock bed, and a sack of chaff, as a substitute for a bolster, he thought himself as well lodged as the lord of the town. Wooden trenchers and wooden spoons were generally used about the same period, pewter vessels being accounted great luxuries, and prohibited from being hired, except on Christmas, Easter, St. George's Day, and Whitsunday.

By an act of parliament in Scotland, passed in the year 1429, none were permitted to wear silks, or costly furs, but knights and lords of two hundred merks yearly rent. But by another act, of 1457, the same dress was permitted to aldermen, bailies, and other good worthy men within burgh; and, by a third act, it was granted to gentlemen of £100 yearly rent. As strongly illustrating the singular manners of the time, the following anecdote is related: James I., British monarch, was during his infancy committed to the Dowager Countess of Mar, who had been educated in France. On one occasion, the king being seized with a colic during the night time, his household servants flew to his bed-chamber; but the women as well as men were in a complete state of nudity; nay, even the countess herself wore nothing but her chemise !

Hollinshed exclaims against the luxury and effeminacy that prevailed in his time. “In time past," he says, "men were contented to dwell in houses builded of sallow, willow, plumb-tree, or elm; so that the use of oak was dedicated to churches, religious houses, princes' palaces, noblemen's lodgings, and navigation. But now these are rejected, and nothing but oak any whit regarded. And yet see the change; for when our houses were builded of willow, then had we oaken men; but now that our houses are made of oak, our men are not only become willow, but many, through Persian delicacy crept in among us, altogether of straw, which is a sore alteration."-Jenoway's Antiquarian and Historical Notes.

CORONATION FEASTS.

THE quantity of provisions consumed at the coronation feasts given by some of our early kings was extraordinarily great. For that of

King Edward I., February 10th, 1274, the different sheriffs were ordered to furnish butcher meat at Windsor, in the following proportions:

Oxen. Swine. Sheep. Fowls.

60

3000

Bucks and Bedford

In the year 1307, King Edward II. issued an order to the seneschal of Gascony and constable of Bordeaux, to provide a thousand pipes of good wine, and send them to London, to be used at the approaching coronation. The purchase and freight were to be paid by a company of Florentine merchants, who farmed the revenues of Gascony. The coronation oath was first taken by Ethelred II., A.D. 979; that now used, in 1377. It was amended in 1689. The first coronation sermon was preached in 1041.—R. O. Jenoway.

THE UNLUCKY DIAMOND NECKLACE.

JEANNE, Countess de Lamotte-Valois, the "princess of intrigue," as she has been aptly called, was born of poor parents, in 1757. Taken into service by the lady of the manor where her parents resided, the lady frequently heard the girl speak of valuable papers which were in the possession of her father. Those papers were examined, and proved to relate to the royal family of Valois, and Jeanne was discovered to be a descendant of that family, and entitled to the rank of countess. She married a private in the Guards, and was subsequently introduced to Queen Marie Antoinette; and whilst in her service the countess resorted to an extraordinary trick to enrich herself. Cardinal Rohan had a passion for the queen, and Lamotte persuaded him to purchase for her majesty a diamond necklace of extraordinary beauty, which she said the queen longed to have (and which she said her majesty would arrange to pay for), and that by this means he would ingratiate himself in her favour, he having offended her. This necklace had been made by order of Louis XV. for his mistress, Madame du Barry. But Louis died before it was completed, and it remained on the jewellers' hands. The countess undertook herself to deliver the necklace to the queen, and to procure an interview between her majesty and the cardinal. The latter fell into the snare. He bought the necklace for 1,800,000 francs (£72,000), Lamotte having forged the queen's name to an order on the jewellers for the treasure to be paid for by instalments. The cardinal handed the necklace to the countess, and she told him she had given it to the queen, who

would meet the cardinal in a garden to thank him. A friend of the countess's personated her majesty, met the cardinal for a few moments, thanked him, and promised him her protection. The countess, meanwhile had sent her husband to London with the necklace, where it was broken up in small pieces and sold. The first instalment falling due, the plot was discovered; the cardinal, the countess, and the woman who had personated the queen were arrested, but the countess alone was punished. She was condemned to ask the queen's pardon with a rope round her neck, to be whipped and branded on each shoulder with the letter V (probably for Valois, or for voleuse, thief), and imprisoned in La Salpétrière. She, however, afterwards escaped to England, and died in London. The cardinal was declared innocent of all fraud, but was much ridiculed for his extreme credulity; and was ordered into exile by the king, and compelled to resign all his posts.

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A MONARCH'S LAST WORDS.

THE last words of Charles V. of France, surnamed "The Wise," are memorable for the noble moral for kings which they contain-and indeed, they are applicable to all, as every man has the power to do good or evil. "I have aimed at justice," said he to those around him; "but what king can be certain that he has always followed it? Perhaps I have done much evil of which I am ignorant. Frenchmen, who now hear me, I address myself to the Supreme Being and to you. I find that kings are happy but in this—that they have the power of doing good."

BUCCANEERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN.

THE successes of the English in the predatory incursions upon Spanish America, during the reign of Elizabeth, had never been forgotten; and from that period downwards the exploits of Drake and Raleigh were imitated, upon a smaller scale indeed, but with equally desperate valour, by small bands of pirates, gathered from all nations, but chiefly French and English. The engrossing policy of the Spaniards tended greatly to increase the number of these freebooters, from whom their commerce and colonies suffered, in the issue, dreadful calamity. The Windward Islands, which the Spaniards did not deem worthy their own occupation, had been gradually settled by adventurers of the French and English nations. But Frederic of Toledo, who was despatched in 1630, with a powerful fleet against the Dutch, had orders from the court of Madrid to destroy these colonies, whose vicinity at once offended the pride and excited the jealous suspicions of their Spanish neighbours. This order the Spanish admiral executed with sufficient rigour; but the only consequence was, that the planters, being rendered desperate by persecution, began, under the well-known name of buccaneers, a retaliation so horridly savage that the perusal makes the reader shudder. When they carried on their depredations at- sea, they boarded, without respect to disparity

of number, every Spanish vessel that came in their way; and demeaning themselves, both in the battle and after the conquest, more like demons than human beings, they succeeded in impressing their enemies with a sort of superstitious terror, which rendered them incapable of offering effectual resistance. From piracy at sea, they advanced to making predatory descents on the Spanish territories, in which they displayed the same furious and irresistible valour, the same thirst of spoil, and the same brutal inhumanity to their captives. The large treasures which they acquired in their adventures, they dissipated by the most unbounded licentiousness in gaming, women, wine, and debauchery of every species. When their spoils were thus wasted, they entered into some new association, and undertook new adventures.-Scott.

ORIGIN OF STARCHING.

IN the year 1564, Mistress Dinghan Van den Plasse, born at Haerlem, in Flanders, daughter to a worshipful knight of that province, with her husband came to London for their better safeties, and there professed herself a starcher, wherein she excelled; unto whom her own nation presently repaired, and paid her very liberally for her own work. Some very few damsels, and most curious wives of that time, observing the neatness of the Dutch, for whiteness and fine wearing of linen, made their cambric ruffs and sent them to Mistress Dinghan to starch, and then they began to send their daughters and nearest kinswomen to Mistress Dinghan, to learn how to make starch.-Stowe, the Antiquary.

FAIRS.

ABOUT the beginning of the eleventh century, and perhaps even earlier, trade was principally carried on by means of Fairs. Many marts of this sort were established by William the Conqueror and his successors. The merchants, who frequented them in numerous companies, used every art to draw the people together; hence the custom of jugglers, buffoons, etc., assembling at these places.

TRIAL BY JURY.

AT what period trial by jury was first introduced into the English laws cannot now be exactly ascertained, although it is certainly referable to the Saxon era. Its origin may be traced to a principle in use at a very early date. When a man was accused of any crime, it was a judicial custom of the Saxons, that he might clear himself, if he could procure a certain number of persons to swear that they believed him guiltless of the allegation. These persons so produced were called compurgators, and the veredictum sworn to by them so far determined the case as to acquit the prisoner. That trial by jury existed at the time of the Conquest is not disputed.-Fenoway.

OUTLAWS OF SHERWOOD FOREST.

THE severity of those tyrannical forest laws that were introduced by our Norman kings, and the great temptation of breaking them by such as lived near the royal forests, at a time when the yeomanry of this kingdom were everywhere trained up to the long-bow, and excelled all other nations in the art of shooting, must constantly have occasioned great numbers of outlaws, and especially of such as were the best marksmen. These naturally fled to the woods for shelter, and forming into troops, endeavoured by their numbers to protect themselves from the dreadful penalties of their delinquency. The ancient punishment for killing the king's deer, was loss of eyes and castration, a punishment far worse than death. This will easily account for the troops of banditti which formerly lurked in the royal forests, and, from their superior skill in archery, and knowledge of all the recesses of those unfrequented solitudes, found it no difficult matter to resist or elude the civil power. Among all those, none was ever more famous than Robin Hood, whose chief residence was in Sherwood Forest, in Nottinghamshire; and the heads of whose story, as collected by Stowe, are briefly these:In this time (about the year 1190, in the reign of Richard I.) were many robbers and outlawes, among the which Robin Hood and Little John, renowned thieves, continued in woods, despoyling and robbing goods of the rich. They killed none but such as would invade them; or by resistance for their own defence. The said Robert entertained an hundred tall men and good archers with such spoyles and thefts as he got, upon whom four hundred (were they ever so strong) durst not give the onset. He suffered no woman to be oppressed, violated, or otherwise molested; poore men's goods he spared, abundantlie relieving them with that which by theft he had got from abbeys and the houses of rich earles: whom Maior (the historian) blameth for his rapine and theft, but of all thieves he affirmeth him to be the prince and the most gentle thiefe."

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The personal courage of this celebrated outlaw, his skill in archery, his humanity, his levelling principle of taking from the rich and giving to the poor, have in all ages rendered him the favourite of the common people.-Percy's Reliques.

THE BUCENTAUR.

THE Bucentaur was a large galley, belonging to the State of Venice, which was finely adorned with pillars, splendidly gilt, and furnished with a covering of purple silk. In this vessel the doge received the great lords and persons of quality who visited Venice, accompanied by the ambassadors, councillors of state, and senators; and the same vessel was employed on Ascension Day, in the magnificent ceremony of espousing the sea, by throwing a ring into it, as a symbolical expression of the dominion of the Venetians over the Gulf.

EXTRAORDINARY BIRTH OF TRIPLETS.

"IN the year 1666, in the county of Sussex, Mrs. Palmer, wife of