"a most rich and plentifull countrey, full of corne and cattle," says the inhabitants were so reduced, that, "if they found a plot of water-cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time." Sir Henry Piers says, that in Westmeath, between May day and harvest, "butter, new cheese, and curds, and shamrocks, are the food of the meaner sort all this season." Wythers in his "abuses stript and whipt, 1613," has this passage. And, for my cloathing, in a mantle goe, blades into the ground, thinking thereby to have the better successe in fight. Also they use commonly to sweare by their swords. The manner of their woemen's riding on the wrong side of the horse, I meane with their faces towards the right side, as the Irish use, is (as they say) old Spanish, and some say African, for amongst them the woemen (they say) use so to ride." Gainsford, in "The Glory of England, 1619," speaking of the Irish, says, "They use incantations and spells, wearing girdles of women's haire, and locks of their lovers: they are curious about their horses tending to witchcraft." Richard Weston, Earl of Portland, who died in March, 1634, set out in life with a great character for prudence, spirit, and abilities, and discharged his duty as ambassador, and afterwards, on his re turn, as chancellor of the exchequer, with much credit. Under the ministry of the Duke of Buckingham, in the reign of James I., he was appointed lord treasurer on which he suddenly became so elated, that he lost all disposition to please; and, soon after the duke's death, became his successor in the public hatred, without succeeding him in his credit at court. His lust after power, and his rapacity to raise a great fortune, were immeasurable; yet the jealousy of his temper frustrated the one, and the greatness of his expenses the other. His imperious nature led him to give frequent offence, while his timidity obliged him to make frequent humiliating concessions to the very people he had offended. had a strange curiosity to learn what the persons injured said of him; the knowledge of which always brought on fresh troubles, as he would expostulate with them for their severe sayings, as if he had never given cause for them; by which he He Is the Thursday before Easter. Some ancient usages upon this day are stated in the Every Day Book, together with an account of bestowing the Maundy at court, where silver and provisions are annually distributed by the king's almoner to poor people. The ancient sovereigns of England were accustomed to wash the feet of twelve paupers, in imitation of the Saviour washing the feet of his disciples. The giving, of the "maund," which accompanied the practice, is the only relic of it remaining. King James II. was the last who personally washed the feet of the poor people. The Earl of Northumberland, in 1512, kept his "Maundy," if at home, for as many poor men as he was years of age. Cardinal Wolsey, in 1530, at Peterborough Abbey: "upon Palme Sunday he bare his palme, and went in procession, with the monks setting forth the divine service right honorably, with such singing men as he then had there of his own. And, upon Maundy Thursday, he made his Maundy there, in our Lady's chapel, having fifty-nine poor men whose feet he washed and kissed; and, after he had wiped them, he gave every of the said poor men twelve pence in money, three ells of good canvass to make them shirts, a pair of new shoes, a cast of red herrings, and three white herrings; and one of these had two shillings."+ • Noble. + Cavendish's Life of Wolsey. OLD WATCHMAKERS, On the 19th of March, 1725, died, aged 75, Daniel Quare, an eminent watchmaker. He was successor to George Graham, who died in 1775, at the age of 78. Graham was successor to Thomas Tom pion, who died in 1713, aged 75. Tompion had been a blacksmith. Before his time, watches were of rude construction. In the reign of Charles I. they were much improved. The king's own watch, which is still preserved, has a catgut string instead of a chain; and indeed watches of that construction were in use during a very considerable time after the period of their improvement. The Rev. Mark Noble, who died a few years ago, says, "When very young I was indulged with taking an ancient family watch to school. It was very small and in silver cases, with a catgut string instead of a chain; and it required to be wound up every twelve hours. It was made in Holland. At this moment I feel ashamed to say, that I pulled it to pieces, and sold the movements for whirligigs." to Robert Hooke invented the double balance in 1658, which Tompion completed in 1675, and presented to Charles II., and two of them were sent the dauphin of France, where Huygens had obtained a patent for spiral springwatches, which idea, it is believed, he gained from the information of Mr. Oldenburg, who derived it from Mr. Derham. It is allowed, however, that Huygens did invent those watches which went without strings or chains. Barlow, in the reign of James II., is said to have discovered the method of making striking watches; but, Quare's being judged superior by the privy council, Barlow did not obtain a patent. Tompion's watches continued valuable for a long time, owing to their being large, and the wheels having been made of well-hammered brass. The three eminent watchmakers in succession, Tompion, Graham, and Quare, were members of the society of Friends.* WATCHES. Watches may be traced to the fourteenth century. They were shaped like an egg, and are supposed to have been first invented at Nuremberg. Although it has been said that they were introduced into England in 1577, yet it is certain that Henry VIII. had a watch; and in • Noble. 1572 the earl of Leicester presented to queen Elizabeth "one armelet, or shakell of golde, all over fairely garnished with small diamondes, and fower score and one smaller peeces, fully garnished with like diamondes, and hanging thereat a round clocke fullie garnished with diamonds, and an appendant of diamonds hanging thereat." They were worn ostentatiously hanging round the neck to a chain, which fashion has of late been revived. In an old play, "A Mad World My Masters," one of the characters says, "Ah, by my troth, Sir; besides a jewel, and a jewel's fellow, a good fair watch, that hung about my neck." A watch makes a part of the supposed grandeur of Malvolio, in his anticipated view of his great fortune.-"I frown the while, and perchance wind up my watch, or play with some rich jewel." The " motley fool," described by Jacques, had a watch in his pocket, which Shakspeare poetically calls a dial. And then he drew a dial from his poke, And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye, Says, very wisely, it is ten o'clock. Aubrey tells the following story of a Mr. Allen, a reputed sorceror, which, as he died in 1630, at the age of 96, may refer to the middle of Elizabeth's reign: "One time being at Home Lacy, in Herefordshire, he happened to leave his watch in the chamber window (watches were then rarities); the maids came in to make the bed, and hearing a thing in a case cry 'tick, tick, tick,' presently concluded that that was the devil [Allen's supposed familiar], and took it by the string with the tongs, and threw it out of the window in the mote, to drown the devil. It so happened that the string hung on a sprig of elder that grew out of the mote, and this confirmed them that 'twas the devil. So the good old gentleman got his watch again." The hon. Daines Barrington mentions that a thief was detected by watches called "strikers," which he says were introduced in the reign of Charles II.; but repeating watches were worn in the time of Ben Jonson: in his "Staple of News," he brings in one: 'Tstrikes! one, two, Three, four, five, six. Enough, enough, dear watch, Thy pulse hath beat enongh. Now stop, and rest; Would thou couldst make the time to do so too; I'll wind thee up no more. Watches were so rarely in use in the early time of James I., that it was deemed a cause of suspicion that one was found, in 1605, upon Guy Vaux. Jonson, in the "Alchemist," tells of the loan of one to wear on a particular occasion:And I had lent my watch last night, to one That dines to-day at the sheriff's. In 1638 they were more common. It is complained in the "Antipodes," a comedy of that year, that Every clerk can carry The time of day in his pocket: on which account a projector in the same play proposes to diminish the grievance by a Project against The multiplicity of pocket watches. As respects the early price of watches scarcely any thing is known. In 1643 four pounds were paid to redeem a watch taken from a nobleman in battle. In 1661 there was advertised as lost, "a round watch of reasonable size, showing the day of the month, age of the moon, and tides, upon the upper plate. Thomas Alcock, fecit." Pepys's curiosity extended to be acquainted with the watch: he says in his diary, December 22, 1661, "I to my lord Brouncker's, and there spent the evening, by my desire, in seeing his lordship open to pieces and make up again his watch, thereby being taught what I never knew before; and it is a thing very well worth my having seen, and am mightily pleased and satisfied with it." Our countrymen were so famous for the manufacture of watches that, in 1698, an act was passed to compel makers to affix their names upon those they made, in order that discreditable ones might not be passed for English.* The following paragraph from a newspaper of April 26, 1788, tends to claim a higher antiquity for watches than is already stated. "Among other curious pieces in his majesty's possession is a watch, which was found in Bruce Castle, in Scotland, fifteen years since. On the dial-plate is written, Robertus B. Rex Scotorum,' and over it is a convex horn, instead of glass. Robert Bruce began his reign in 1305, and died in 1328. The outer case is of silver, in a raised pat tern, on a ground of blue enamel." Noble. Fosbroke. Nares. Pepys. It should have been mentioned that the cut of these premises, at p. 47 of the Year Book, represents them as they appeared previously to the erection, about 1825, of the smart baker's shop which now occupies the corner. It may also be recollected that the Paddington Drag, the tedious progress of which is so correctly described, made its way to the City down the defile called Gray's Inn Lane, and gave the passengers an opportunity for shopping," by waiting an hour or more at the Blue Posts, Holborn Bars. The route to the Bank, by the way of the City Road, was then a thing unthought of; and the Hampstead coachman who first achieved this daring feat was regarded with admiration, somewhat akin to that bestowed on him who first doubled the Cape in search of a passage to India. 46 The spot which you recollect as a rural suburb, and which is now surrounded on every side by streets and squares, was once numbered among the common boundaries of a Cockney's Sunday walk. George Wither, in his "Brittain's Remembrancer, 1628," has this passage :"Some by the bancks of Thames their pleasure taking; Some, sullibubs among the milkmaids making; With musique some, upon the waters rowing; Some to the next adjoyning hamlets going; And Hogsdone, Islington, and Tothnam-Court, For cakes and creame, had then no small resort." One or two more notices of these ancient Sunday walks may not be unsuited to the Year Book. In the poem just quoted, Wither mentions "Those who did never travell, till of late, Halfe way to Pancridge from the City gate." Brome in his "New Academy, 1658," Act 2, has this passage : "When shall we walk to Totnam? or crosse That gall their hands with stool-balls, or their cat-sticks, For white-pots, pudding-pies, stew'd prunes, and tansies, To feast their titts at Islington or Hogsden." J. B- -n. Staffordshire Moorlands. Mr. HONE, II. Your brief notice of the Adam and Eve, Hampstead-road, has awakened many a pleasant reminiscence of a suburb which was the frequent haunt of my boyish days, and the scene of some of the happiest hours of my existence, at a more mature age. But it has also kindled a very earnest desire for a more particular inspection into the store-house of your memory, respecting this subject; and it has occurred to me, that you could scarcely fill a sheet or two of your Year Book with matter more generally interesting, to the majority of your readers, than your own recollections of the northern suburb of London would supply. Few places afford more scope for pleasant writing, and for the indulgence of personal feeling; for not many places have undergone, within the space of a few years, a more entire, and, to me, scarcely pleasing, transmutation. I am almost afraid to own that " Mary-le-bone Park holds a dearer place in my affections than its more splendid, but less rural successor. When too I remember the lowly, but picturesque, old "Queen's Head and Artichoke," with its long skittle, and "bumble puppy" grounds; and the "Jews Harp," with its bowery tea-gardens, I have little pleasure in the sight of the gin-shoplooking places which now bear the names. Neither does the new "Haymarket" compensate me for the fields in which I made my earliest studies of cattle, and once received from the sculptor, Nollekens, an approving word and pat on the head, as he returned from his customary morning walk. : Coming more eastward,-I remember the "long fields" with regret and, Somers' Town, isolated and sunny as it was when I first haunted it, is now little better than another arm to the great Briareus, dingy with smoke, and deprived, almost wholly, of the gardens and fields which once seemed to me to render it a terrestrial paradise. The Hampstead-road, and the once beautiful fields leading to, and surrounding Chalk Farm, have not escaped the profanations of the builder's craft; and Hampstead itself, "the region of all suburban ruralities," has had a vital blow aimed at its noble heath, and lovely "Vale of Health." (Did the resemblance of the scenery, in a certain sense, to that of Tunbridge Wells, never occur to you?) True, the intended sacrilege was not effected; but what is not to be dreaded from the pertinacity of its tasteless, and, surely, senseless lord,-senseless, because he cannot see that the attainment of his object would defeat, instead of further, his avaricious views, by rendering the buildings almost wholly valueless? One might almost as reasonably deprive Ramsgate of the sea, or Leamington of its Spa. Hampstead, besides, affords many delightful subjects for pictorial illustrations, and which would show well in the free and sketchy style of your clever engraver. The residences of men remarkable for talent might also be pointed out. Somers' Town, for example, is full of artists, as a reference to the R. A. Catalogues will evince. In Clarendon-square still lives, I believe, Scriven, the engraver, an artist of great ability, and, in his day, of much consideration. In the same neighbourhood dwells the venerable De Wilde, who may justly be termed the best historian of the stage for upwards of half a century. From his pencil came the whole of the portraits illustrating Bell's edition of the English Theatre; a series of which the Rev. T. F. Dibdin, in his "Library Companion," has spoken of as "admirably executed," and as "making the eyes sparkle, and the heart dance, of a dramatic virtuoso," without doing the artist the poor justice of quoting even his name. Not an actor, I believe, of any note, during the full period above mentioned, can be named, for whose lineaments the theatrical world is not indebted to the faithful and skilful hand of Mr. De Wilde. Upon further consideration, I should think you might agreeably extend the plan, by including the whole suburban circle. Paddington and Bayswater were both "rural" spots, within my remembrance. They can barely claim a title to the appellation now. I need not refer you to a delightful paper in the Literary Examiner, entitled "The Country round London," by Mr. Leigh Hunt. Your paper in the Year Book led me into a chat, the other evening, with a very dear and venerable connexion of my own, who remembers when the "New Road" was not, and when the last house in Tottenham Court-road was the public house in the corner, by Whitfield's Chapel. By the way, I myself remember the destruction of a tree which once shadowed the skittle-ground and road-side of the same house. It was cut down and converted into fire-wood, by a man who kept a coal shed hard by. My relation, above referred to, also remembers when Rathbone-place terminated at the corner of Percy-street; when the windmill which gave its cognomen to the street of that name still maintained its position; and when large soil-pits occupied the site where, I think, Charlotte-street and its neighbouring thoroughfares now stand. A fact which he related, connected with this spot, may be worth repeating. A poor creature, a sailor I believe, was found dead, and denied burial by the parish, on the ground, I infer, of a want of legal settlement. The body was placed in a coffin, and carried about the streets, in that condition, by persons who solicited alms to defray the expense of the funeral. Something considerable is supposed to have been thus collected; but the body was thrown into one of these pits, and the money applied to other purposes. After a time, the corpse, of course, floated, and the atrocity was discovered; but the perpetrators were not to be found. My informant himself saw the procession, and, subsequently, the fragments of the coffin lying on the surface of the water. I will only add, that he recollects to have seen sixteen-string Jack taken to Tyburn, and that he also recollects going to see the celebrated Ned Shuter at a low pothouse in St. Giles's, at six in the morning, where, upon quitting the Theatre, he had adjourned to exhibit his extraordinary powers to a motley crew of midnightrevellers, consisting chiefly of highwaymen, carmen, sweeps, et id genus omne. If you should not consider my sugges tion as at all worthy of notice, I really know not how to justify this epistle, and shall therefore leave any sort of apology unattempted. I am, &c. |