Stafford, and Perche, Lord of the Honours of Brecknock and Holderness, Hereditary Lord High Constable of England, Knight of the Garter, and the possessor of manors, boroughs, castles, lordships, and advowsons, in most of the counties of England and Wales, was probably, at the end of the fifteenth century, the wealthiest of the half-dozen more prominent peers of the realm, but in the pomp and circumstance of his life he was a fair specimen of the most powerful of the nobility who aspired to direct the action of the crown. He was the descendant and representative of Thomas Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, youngest son of Edward III.; was brother-in-law, moreover, of the powerful Earl of Northumberland, and, by the marriage of his three daughters, father-in-law of the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Westmoreland, and Lord Abergavenny. His son Henry was married to Ursula, sister of Cardinal Pole, and granddaughter of George, Duke of Clarence, the brother of Edward IV. and of Richard III., a marriage which brought the Duke of Buckingham near to the throne, and by alarming the jealousy of the reigning king, consigned him to the scaffold. The Venetian ambassador, Giustinian, estimated his annual rental at thirty thousand ducats, equal to about a hundred and eighty thousand pounds of money of present value.* This from other evidence we know to be no exaggerated estimate, though made at a time when the money rental of a nobleman who possessed many manors and lordships was far from representing even the chief part of his wealth. At his table in the great hall of Thornbury upwards of two hundred guests shared his breakfast and his dinner.† Among his servants and retainers might be seen the sons of noblemen who had been sent to his household to learn the duties and accomplishments of their station. These served him as pages and henchmen, and waited upon him at his meals, whilst in their turn they were waited upon by their own servants, who thus in fact swelled the number of the retainers and attendants of the duke. When he travelled from one of his manors to another, to Stoneleigh or Brecknock, to Newport or Tonbridge, or when he went to his London house, he made the journey in ordinary circumstances with a retinue of knights and gentry, of upper servants and grooms, to the number of sixty or seventy persons, a small retinue for so great a lord, as though he would have avoided the misconstruction if he were attended by too large a number of followers. The retainers, however, who bore the Stafford knot on their liveries, and who had sworn to espouse his quarrel and to defend their lord, and who gathered round him on occasions • Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII., vol. ii., p. 315. + Archæologia, vol. xxv., p. 311. Hovedon, vol. ii., p. 232 (Riley); Fiddes' Life of Wolsey, in appendix No. 6, c. iv; Venetian Relation of England (Camd. Soc.), p. 75; Roper's Life of More, p. 3 (edit. Singer) Northumberland Household Book, p. 40. of state, were almost a small army, justifying in some respects a part of the indictment at his trial, that they were "arrayed to assist him in his treason."*-Ib., p. 265. 1669.-"EXCERPTA EX REGISTRIS PAROCHIALIBUS," ETC.-The late Sir Thomas Phillipps issued in lithograph, with a printed title, for private circulation, a folio of sixty-two pages, entitled Excerpta ex Registris Parochialibus, in Com. Gloucester, &c., "ex Lithographia Medio-Montana," 1854. The contents, it may be well to note, are as follows: 1. Buckland: Burials (1232), 1551-1804-pp. 1-17. : 8. Saintbury: Burials (18), 1617-1702-p. 54. 9. Saintbury: Notes of Hatchments, Monuments, and Gravestones-p. 54. 10. Weston-sub-Edge: Baptisms (258), 1654-1709-pp. 55-59. 11. Weston-sub-Edge: Burials (184), 1657-1709-pp. 59-62. ABHBA. 1670.-JOHN CROKER, OF BATSFORD. (See ante, p. 150.) The registers of Batsford (not Batford) contain these entries:1588. Jan 17, bapt. Anne, da. of John Croker, gent. : 1589. May 29, bapt. John, son of John Croker, gent. 1592. April 30, bapt. Dorothie, da. of John Croker, gent. 1599. Dec. 18, Ann, da. of John Croker, gen: of Battesford. THOMAS P. WADLEY, M.A. 1671.-GLOUCESTERSHIRE MSS. IN ST. MARY MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD.-From the Eighth Report of the Commission on Historical Manuscripts, appendix, pp. 262, 263, we learn what follows with reference to the parishes of Slymbridge and Quinton : I. There is an interesting series of thirty-one deeds and papers relating to the advowson of Slymbridge (1484-1520), but which throw no light on the origin of the curious custom of having a service of song on the top of the great tower of the College at 5 o'cl. on the morning of May-Day, for which service 101. are annually paid by the rector of Slymbridge.† [The remainder of this paragraph has been given ante, vol. ii., p. 89, and need not be repeated.] • Third Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records, p. 231. + See ante, vol. i., pp. 377, 437; ii., 89. II. Eighty-four deeds (1200-1685) relate to the parish of Quinton, and the family of Marmyun, the lords of the same, with descent to the Fitz-Hughs of Ravenswath, and to Ralph, Lord Cromwell. With regard to the claims of the two last families there is a long decree of arbitration (filling two large sheets of vellum), by the Bishop of London and the Bishop of Ely, dated 9 July, 1429, which concerns also the estates of the Marmions in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Sussex. The descent of the claimants is thus given in a paper numbered 59 :— The manor eventually came into the possession of Lord Cromwell, and his executors, Bp. Wayneflete, Sir John Fortescu, and Sir Thos. Tyrrell, bought it of his niece Maud, Lady Willoughby, for 2001. Upon the conveyance of the manor to the College there is an interesting account in English (drawn up, as it would seem, for the information of the College) of the condition and size of the old house, and of the estimates of two carpenters for its repair with new bay-windows, the one providing wood, &c., for 351, at 57. per bay, and the other undertaking the workmanship at 4 marks per bay; with particulars of a house "goodly buylded" within the last 18 years, 14 miles from Quinton, at a cost of 2007., which now may be bought for 801. There is also a memorial in English, to Wayneflete, and the president and masters of the College, respecting the letting of the farms, and complaining of one John Selbrygge, who disturbed the cottagers in their lands; and after the death of Wayneflete, there comes a very long and interesting letter to Pres. Mayew, from the vicar of Quinton (who does not sign his name), in which he pleads touchingly and earnestly, in the behalf of the poorer members of his flock, for the letting of the land to the community of the "towne", and not to one farmer • This has been given in full ante, pp. 251-253. alone, representing that it is more "meritory" to support a "comynte then one man, your tenaunts rather than a strange man, the pore and the innocent afor a gentylman or a gentylman's man," and that at present the poor cottagers have each one, two, or three acres of land, and ending by generously offering, if the president will let them have it for 307., to give him his horse Lyerd, and to take a share in the responsibility. Only one document follows this letter previous to the year 1586, and there is therefore no evidence from these deeds whether the memorial that does its writer so much credit was responded to as he desired or not, unless the absence here of subsequent leases may show that the answer was affirmative. 1672.-BRISTOL IN THE REIGN OF CHARLES II.-Next to the capital, but next at an immense distance, stood Bristol, then the first English seaport, and Norwich, then the first English manufacturing town. Both have since that time been far outstripped by younger rivals; yet both have made great positive advances. The population of Bristol has [more than] quadrupled. population of Norwich has more than doubled. The Pepys, who visited Bristol eight years after the Restoration, was struck by the splendour of the city. But his standard was not high; for he noted down as a wonder the circumstance that, in Bristol, a man might look round him and see nothing but houses. It seems that, in no other place with which he was acquainted, except London, did the buildings completely shut out the woods and fields. Large as Bristol might then appear, it occupied but a very small portion of the area on which it now stands. A few churches of eminent beauty rose out of a labyrinth of narrow lanes built upon vaults of no great solidity. If a coach or a cart entered those alleys, there was danger that it would be wedged between the houses, and danger also that it would break in the cellars. Goods were therefore conveyed about the town almost exclusively in trucks drawn by dogs; and the richest inhabitants exhibited their wealth, not by riding in gilded carriages, but by walking the streets with trains of servants in rich liveries, and by keeping tables loaded with good cheer. The pomp of the christenings and burials far exceeded what was seen at any other place in England. The hospitality of the city was widely renowned, and especially the collations with which the sugar refiners regaled their visitors. The repast was dressed in the furnace, and was accompanied by a rich beverage made of the best Spanish wine, and celebrated over the whole kingdom as Bristol milk. This luxury was supported by a thriving trade with the North American plantations and with the West Indies. The passion for colonial traffic was so strong that there was scarce a small shopkeeper in Bristol who had not a venture on board of some ship bound for Virginia or the Antilles. Some of these ventures indeed were not of the most honourable kind. There was, in the Transatlantic possessions of the crown, a great demand for labour; and this demand was partly supplied by a system of crimping and kidnapping at the principal English seaports. Nowhere was this system found in such active and extensive operation as at Bristol. Even the first magistrates of that city were not ashamed to enrich themselves by so odious a commerce. The number of houses appears, from the returns of the hearth money, to have been, in the year 1685, just five thousand three hundred. We can hardly suppose the number of persons in a house to have been greater than in the city of London; and in the city of London we learn from the best authority that there were then fifty-five persons to ten houses. The population of Bristol must therefore have been about twenty-nine thousand souls. [Authorities:] Evelyn's Diary, June 27, 1654; Pepys's Diary, June 13, 1668; Roger North's Lives of Lord Keeper Guildford, and of Sir Dudley North; Petty's Political Arithmetic. I have taken Petty's facts, but, in drawing inferences from them, I have been guided by King and Davenant, who, though not abler men than he, had the advantage of coming after him. As to the kidnapping for which Bristol was infamous, see North's Life of Guildford, 121, 216, and the harangue of Jeffreys on the subject in the Impartial History of his Life and Death, printed with the Bloody Assizes. His style was, as usual, coarse; but I cannot reckon the reprimand which he gave to the magistrates of Bristol among his crimes.-Lord Macaulay's History of England (10th ed.), vol. i., p. 334. 1673.-GLOUCESTERSHIRE HANGMEN IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.-A somewhat amusing illustration of the inefficacy of the Draconian laws of the last century to suppress crime appears in Sarah Farley's Bristol Journal for May 2, 1767. It must be premised that the country was afflicted by a terrible dearth in 1766, when the labouring classes of many districts, exasperated by the misery of their families, and ignorantly believing that the high prices were due to the avarice of the farmers, burst into violent riots and committed great devastation. In Gloucestershire the attacks on persons and property were so serious that the government sent down a special commission for the trial of the criminals, some six or seven of whom were hanged and many transported. The paragraph above referred to will complete the story :-"At the execution of the rioters upon the late special commission at Gloucester, Harris, the common hangman, being at that time in gaol as a party concerned in those outrages, one Evans, of Hampton, was procured to officiate in his stead. This fellow, last week, committed some trifling theft, for which the justices ordered him to be whipped by his brother hangman, Mr. Harris, who told the delinquent that he should severely smart for the reflection he had |