Look on the valley! how the sun-light plays, Where those dim dewy house-tops intervene, cloud That seem the smiles of beauty in her shroud! A bank of dreamy vapor hangs about And calls its glories into beauteous light. So have I seen the playful breeze at morn, Whilst giant Faith, on stedfast wing upborne, March 25. LADY DAY. This is the festival of the Annunciation; the manner of its observance in former times is related in the Every Day Book. WEATHER-COCKS IN KENT. On the 25th of March, 1672, Mr. Evelyn journed to the coast of Kent in an official capacity, and enters in his diary," I came back through a country the best cultivated of any that in my life I had ever seen; every field lying as even as a bowling-green, and the fences, plantations, and husbandry in such admirable order as infinitely delighted me--observing almost every tall tree to have a weathercock on the top bough, and some trees half-adozen. I learned that on a certain holiday the farmers feast their servants, at which solemnity they set up these cocks as a kind of triumph." March 26. WITCH-FINDING AT NEWCASTLE. Mention occurs of a petition in the common council books of Newcastle, dated March 26th, 1649, and signed, no doubt, by the inhabitants, concerning witches, the purport of which appears, from what followed, to have occasioned all such persons as were suspected, to be apprehended and brought to trial. In consequence of this the magistrates sent two of their serjeants into Scotland, to agree with a Scotchman, who pretended knowledge to find out witches by pricking them with pins, to come to Newcastle, where he should try such as should be brought to him, and have twenty shillings a-piece for all he should condemn as witches, and free passage thither and back. When the serjeants brought the witch-finder on horseback to town, the magistrates sent their bellman through the town, ringing his bell and crying, all people that would bring in any complaint against any woman for a witch, they should be sent for, and tried by the person appointed. Thirty women brought into the Town Hall, and had pins thrust into their flesh, and most of them were found guilty. The witch-finder acquainted lieut. col. Hobson, that he knew whether women were witches or no by their look: but, when the said person was searching of a personable and good-like woman, the said colonel replied, and said, surely this woman is none, and need not be tried; but the Scotchman said she was, for the town said she was, and therefore he would try her: and presently he ran a pin into her and set her aside as a guilty person, and child of the devil, and fell to try others, whom he pronounced guilty. Lieut. col. Hobson proved upon the spot the fallacy of the fellow's trial of the woman, and then the Scotchman cleared her, and said she was not a child of the devil. were It appears by an extract from the registry of the parochial chapelry of St. Andrews, in Scotland, that one man and fifteen women were executed at Newcastle for witchcraft; and there is a print of this horrid execution in "Gardner's England's Grievance discovered, 1655," reprinted at Newcastle, 1796. When the witch-finder had done in Newcastle, and received his wages, he went into Northumberland, to try women there, and got three pound's a-piece; but Henry Ogle, esq., laid hold on h andim, required bond of him, to answer at the sessions. He escaped into Scotland, where he was made prisoner, indicted, arraigned, and condemned for such-like villany exercised in Scotland, and confessed at the gallows that he had been the death of above two hundred and twenty women in England and Scotland, for the ain of twenty shillings a-piece.* WITCHES AND CHARMS. It is related, in the Life of Lord Keeper Guildford, that, upon the circuit at Taunton Dean, he detected an imposture and conspiracy against an old man charged with having bewitched a girl of about thirteen years of age, who, during pretended convulsions, took crooked pins into her mouth and spit them afterwards into bye-standers' hands. As the judge went down stairs out of the court, an hideous old woman cried, "God bless your worship." "What's the matter, good woman?" said the judge. "My lord," said she, "forty years ago they would have hanged me for a witch, and they could not, and now they would have hanged my poor son." On Lord Guildford's first circuit west ward, Mr. Justice Rainsford, who had gone former circuits there, went with him, and said that the year before a witch was brought to Salisbury and tried before him. Sir James Long came to his chamber and made a heavy complaint of this witch, and said that, if she escaped, his estate would not be worth any thing; for all the people would go away. It happened that the witch was acquitted, and the knight continued extremely concerned; therefore Rainsford, to save the poor gentleman's estate, ordered the woman to be kept in gaol, and that the town should allow her 2s. 6d. a week, for which he was very thankful. very next assizes he came to the judge to desire his lordship would let her come back to the town. “And why? They could keep her for 1s. 6d. there, and in the gaol she cost them a shilling more." The There is a passage to the following purport, which is much to the present purpose, in the life before cited of the Lord Keeper Guildford :--" It is seldom that a poor old wretch is brought to trial • Sykes's Local Records, Newcastle, 1824. for witchcraft but there is at the heels of her a popular rage that docs little less than demand her to be put to death, and if a judge is so clear and open as to declare against that impious vulgar opinion, that the devil himself has power to torment and kill innocent children, or that he is pleased to divert himself with the good people's cheese, butter, pigs, and geese, and the like errors of the ignorant and foolish rabble, the countrymen, the jury, cry, this juuge hath no religion, for he doth not believe witches, and so, to show that they have some, they hang the poor wretches." A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine "the old woman for March, 1736, says, must by age be grown very ugly, her face shriveled, her body doubled, and her made her a terror to the children, who, if voice scarce intelligible: hence her form they were affrighted at the poor creature, were immediately said to be bewitched The mother sends for the parish priest, and the priest for a constable. The imand the paralytic nodding of her head, perfect pronunciation of the old woman, were concluded to be muttering diabolical charms and using certain magical these were proved upon her at gestures; the next assizes, and she was burnt or hanged as an enemy to mankind.” The subjoined recipe is from Reginald Scott's Discovery of Witchcraft : "A Special Charm to preserve all Cattle from Witchcraft. "At Easter you must take certain drops candle, and make a little wax candle that lie uppermost of the holy paschal thereof; and upon some Sunday morning rathe, light and hold it so as it may drop upon and between the horns and ears of Filii, &c., and burn the beast a little bethe beast, saying, In nomine Patris et tween the horns on the ears with the same wax, and that which is left thereof stick it cross-wise about the stable or stall, or upon the threshold, or over the door, where the cattle use to go in and shall never be bewitched." out : and, for all that year, your cattle According to Mr. Pennant, the farmers in Scotland carefully preserve their cattle against witchcraft by placing boughs of mountain-ash and honeysuckle in their cow-houses on the 2nd of May. They hope to preserve the milk of their cows, THE YEAR BOOK.-MARCH 27. and their wives, by tying threads about them; and they bleed the supposed witch to preserve themselves from her charms.* March 27, 1625, king James I. died at Theobalds, in the 59th year of his age, and at the commencement of the twentythird year of his reign in England. James I. had many virtues, but scarcely any of them free from neighbouring vices. His generosity bordered on profusion, his learning on pedantry, his pacific disposition on pusillanimity, his wisdom on cunning, his friendship on light fancy and boyish fondness. While he endeavoured, by an exact neutrality, to acquire the good will of all his neighbours, he was not able to preserve, fully, the esteem and regard of any. Upon the whole, it may be pronounced of his character that all his qualities were sullied with weakness, and embellished by humanity. Hunting and school divinity seem to have been his favorite pursuits.t DRESS, TEMP. JAMES I. Henry Vere, the gallant earl of Oxford, was the first nobleman that appeared at court, in the reign of James 1., with a hat and white feather; which was sometimes worn by the king himself. The long love lock seems to have been first in fashion among the beaux in this reign, who sometimes stuck flowers in their ears. William, earl of Pembroke, a man far from an effeminate character, is represented with ear-rings. Wrought night-caps were in use in the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I. Privy-counsellors and physicians wore them embroidered with gold and silk: those worn by the clergy were only black and white. Mrs. Kennon, the midwife, a collector of curiosities, had the nightcap of Oliver Cromwell, embroidered with lack. * Brand. James appears to have left the beard in much the same state as he found it on his accession to the throne. The cloak, a dress of great antiquity, was more worn in this than in any of the preceding reigns. It continued to be in fashion after the restoration of Charles II. It is well known that James I. sed to hunt in a ruff and trowsers. We learn, from sir Thomas Overbury that yellow stockings were worn by some of the ordinary gentlemen in the country. Silk garters, puffed in a large knot, were worn below the knees, and knots, or roses, in the shoes. Wilson informs us that the countess of Essex, after her divorce, appeared at court "in the habit of a virgin, with her hair pendant almost to her feet: the princess Elizabeth, with much more propriety, wore hers in the same manner when she went to be married to the prince Palatine. The head of the countess of Esse seems to be oppressed with ornaments; and she appears to have exposed more of the bosom than was seen in any former period. The ladies began to indulge a strong passion for foreign laces in the reign of James, which rather increased than abated in succeeding generations. The ruff and farthingale still continued to be worn. Yellow starch for ruffs, first invented by the French, and adapted to the sallow complexions of that people, was introduced by Mrs. Turner, a physician's widow, wno had a principal hand in poisoning sir Thomas Overbury. This vain and infamous woman, who went to be hanged in a ruff of that color, helped to support the fashion as long as she was able. It began to decline upon her execution. The ladies, like those of Spain, were James, which was, perhaps, a reason why banished from court, during the reign of dress underwent very little alteration during that period. It may not be impertinent to remark that the lady of sir Robert Cary, afterwards earl of Monmouth, was mistress of the sweet (or perfumed) coffers to Anne of Denmark; an office which answered to that of mistress of the robes at present. It appears from portraits that long coats were worn by boys, till they were seven or eight years of age, or upwards The dress now worn by the blue coat boys, in London, was that of the time : sets. h. m. 3 45 5 44 6 16 8 15 On March 28th, 1738, died Mrs Ithell, wife of Benedict Ithell, deputy paymaster of Chelsea college, respecting whom, or Mrs. Ithell, nothing more is known than that Mrs. Ithell's death, upon this day, affords the opportunity of stating that she was wife to Mr. Ithell, and that Mr. Ithell appears, from his surname, to have been of Welsh extraction, which leads to this remark that almost all the Welsh families have what were anciently only baptismal ones, as Morgan, Williams, Jones, Cadwallader, Ithell, &c., with a long train of others, annexed by "Ap," which is synonymous with "Ben" in Hebrew, "Fitz" in French, "Vitz" in Russian, and "Son" in the Danish language except that, when the Welsh adopted surnames, which is a late thing with them, they abbreviated the "Ap," by putting the final letter as the prefix to the surname: as, Powel, Parry, Proger, Prichard, Pugh, &c., instead of Ap Owel, Ap-Harry Ap-Roger, Ap-Richard, Ap-Hugh.† full fifteen hands high, gone after the hounds many times, rising six years and no more; moves as well as most creatures upon earth, as good a road mare as any in ten counties, and ten to that; trots at a confounded pace; is from the country, and her owner will sell her for nine guineas; if some folks had her she would fetch near three times the money. [ have no acquaintance, and money I want; and a service in a shop to carry parcels, or to be in a gentleman's service. My father gave me the mare to get rid of me, and to try my fortune in London; and I am just come from Shropshire, and I can be recommended, as I suppose nobody takes servants without, and have a voucher for my mare. Enquire for me at the Talbot Inn, near the New Church in the Strand.-A. R." In Wimbledon church, Surrey, is the following inscription by the Rev. Mr. Cooksoy, the minister,-To THE MEMORY Of JOHN MARTENS, a gardener, a native of Portugal, who cultivated here, with industhree masters [a Mr. Bish, who brought try and success, the same ground under him from Portugal,-Bish Richards, esq., and sir Henry Banks, knight,] forty years. Though skilful and experienced, he was modest and unassuming; and though faithful to his masters, and with reason esteemed, he was kind to his fellow servants, and was therefore beloved. His family and neighbours lamented his death, as he was a careful husband, a tender father, and an honest man. This character is given to posterity by his last master, willingly, because deservedly, as a lasting testimony of his great regard for so good a servant. He died March 30, 1760, aged 66. "To public service grateful nations raise Proud structures, which excite to deeds of praise ; While private services in corners thrown, Howe'er deserving, never gain one stone. But are not lilies, which the valleys hide, Perfect as cedars, though the mountain pride ? The visitors to quit the city. The portentous THE SEASON. The insect world, now sunbeams higher climb, Its butter-cup-like flowers, that shut at night, CLARE. |