the use of the office of sacrist, 201. 4s. &c. And the said Robert and John shall find one white bull every year of the aforesaid term, as often as it shall happen that any gentlewoman, or any other woman, from devotion or vows by them made, shall visit the shrine of the glorious king and martyr St. Edmund, to make the oblations of the said white bull, &c. In witness whereof, to one part of this indenture remaining with the abovenamed abbot, prior, and convent, the said Robert and John have affixed their seals, and to the other part remaining with the said Robert and John, we the above-named abbot, prior, and convent, have caused the common seal of our chapter to be affixed. Given in our chapter-house the xxviiith day of April, in the xxvth year of King Henry the Eighth, and in the year of our Lord 1533."

The waxen impression, still perfect, has on the face St. Edmund, sitting on a royal throne, with a bishop standing on each side; on the reverse he is bound to a tree and transfixed with arrows. Below, in another compartment, is the body of St. Edmund, headless; and near it a wolf, bringing back the royal head to restore it to the body. The instrument is thus indorsed, Irrotulatur per me, Walterum Mildemey. A transcript of this sealed indenture remains in the Court of Augmentations.

Whenever a married woman wished to be pregnant, this white bull, who enjoyed full ease and plenty in the fields of Habyrdon, never meanly yoked to the plough, nor ever cruelly baited at the stake, was led in procession through the principal streets of the town, viz. Church-street, Guildhall-street, and Cook-row, of which the last led to the principal gate of the monastery, attended by all the monks singing, and a shouting crowd, the woman walking by him, and stroking his milk-white side and pendent dewlaps. The bull then being dismissed, the woman entered the church, and paid her vows at the altar of St. Edmund, kissing the stone, and intreating with tears the blessing of a child. This reminds one of the Luperci among the Romans, who ran naked about the streets, and with thongs of goatskins struck women with child in order to give easy labour. Virg, En. VIII. 663.

The above are extracted from the Corolla Varia of the Rev. William Hawkins*, M. A. schoolmaster, of Hadleigh in Suffolk, an entertaining and classical, but now scarce

publication, printed at Cambridge in 1634*. It consists of 1. "Eclogæ tres Virgilianæ declinata; Tityrus, ad Pestifngium; Pollio, ad Postliminium; Gallus, ad Fastidium. 2. Corydon. Aufuga sive good Pastorilia Accipiendo Reverendo Patri ac domino Joanni Episcopo Roffensi per binos Scholæ Hadleiana Alumnos recitata. Apr. 9, 1632, 3. Nisus verberans et vapulans decantatus per Musas vergiferas, juridicas."

The occasion of the latter was briefly this: the three sons of a Mr. Colman, of Payton-Hall (Carbonius et Carbunculi) being admitted at Hadleigh school, one of them in less than two years, unprovoked, and unthreatened, ran away; but a few months after, in the absence of the master and scholars, thought proper to enter the school-room, and filthily bedaub a wooden horse, used for the purpose of flagellation; seen, however, by one of the boys, and boasting of it afterwards to others. A week after, accompanied by a relation, he returned to repeat his pranks, but was then detected by his master, who very properly chastised him, but gently, giving him only four lashes. For this assault (as it was termed) an action was brought against him by the father, at Bury assizes, and the damages were laid at 401. This action Mr. Hawkins was obliged to defend, at great trouble and expense, and at last, before issue was joined, the plaintiff withdrew his plea. All the circumstances of this case, the law process, &c. are described with great elegance and humour; and several commendatory poems are prefixed.

1783, Nov.

XCIII. The Cell called Little Ease.

MR. URBAN,

THE account given in you Magazine for November lastt, of the closet called "Little Ease" in the church of St.

* It appears by the register of Hadleigh, that "Mr. William Hawkins, curate, was buried June 29, 1637."

"From the level of the south wall of St. Mary's church, Leicester, near its centre, and coeval with it, is a closet formed partly by a protuberance, with loop holes, or oblong apertures in front, looking into the church-yard; backed, a few years ago, by a door, which I well remember, opening into the church; called by tradition "little-ease," supposed to have been a place of discipline, where scarcely above one at a time could be admitted; and that only in an erect posture."

Mary in Leicester, brought to my mind a description I had formerly read in Anglia Sacra, Vol. II. p. 96, of the cell of St. Dunstan, adjoining to St. Mary's church in Glastonbury; and, on revising the passage, I find, in some instances, a very striking similitude between the two buildings. Osborn, in his Life of Dunstan, styles it " cellam, sive destinam, sive spelæum ;" and Mr. Wharton, in a note, informs us, that "destina" means a small outward edifice contiguous to the wall of a greater, and that the word occurs in Bede's Eccles. Hist. I. 3. c. 17, and other writers. According to the monk jsh historian, the cell was fabricated by Dunstan himself, and had rather the form of a sepulchre of the dead, than of an habitation for the living. He represents it to have been not more than five feet in length, and two and a half in breadth, and its height answerable to the stature of a man, provided he stood in the hole dug at the bottom of it, for that otherwise it would not be higher than a man's breast, The door seems to have opened into the church, as your correspondent remembers that of the closet at Leicester to have done; but there was this difference between the two edifices, that in the latter are loop-holes looking into the church-yard, whereas all the light the former received was through a window in the middle of the door. In this strait apartment Dunstan is said to have slept, as well as per formed his devotions. Here, also, whilst he was at work, his harp would play of itself for his amusement; and it was through the aperture of the door of this cell he was so lucky as to fasten his red-hot pincers upon Satan's nose. But to wave the ridiculous part of this legendary tale, it is plain from Osborn's relation, that small structures of this kind were erected very early in this country; and though Dunstan, and some other monks as rigid as himself, might, by way of mortification, dwell in these places of "Little Ease,' yet (as the traditional notion with respect to that of Leicester imports) it is very probable they might be intended and applied as prisons, for the security or punishment of persons suspected or convicted of heinous offences.

1784, Jan.

Yours, &c.

W. and P.

XCIV. Emaciated Figures in Churches.

MR. URBAN,

YOUR correspondent B. R. mentions a circumstance

that has struck me as it seems to have done him.

"In

many of our cathedrals is exhibited, on a monument, a whole length recumbent figure of a man, naked, and very much emaciated: and this, the observer is told, is the figure of a certain bishop, who attempted to fast forty days and forty nights, and perished in the experiment." The repetition of this story, in different places, awakened my attention to it, and, upon recollection, I very much doubt whether such a figure ever appears, without having, on a more exalted part of the monument, another recumbent figure of a bishop, in pontificalibus. Now, if this be the case, I should incline to explain it thus. In days of yore, I apprehend that, after the death of kings, prelates, and other considerable persons, their bodies were dressed in their official robes, and thus laid in their coffins; that the last mentioned figures are exact effigies of them in this state, and the first mentioned figures equally exact representations of their bodies before they were thus habited; for surely it cannot be deemed extraordinary, that the bodies of such persons, especially as the greater part of them were far advanced in years, should appear meagre and emaciated after death, and this will be an answer to the question, what was designed by these last mentioned figures, if they are to be found any where, unaccompanied with the effigies in robes? I profess not, by any means, to speak in an authoritative style, but merely to throw out hints, which may engage the attention of some of your readers who are much better qualified to speak to the subject.

1784, Jan.

MR. URBAN,

Yours, &c.

E.

Burbach, April 23.

MANY observations having been lately made in your Magazine by different correspondents in relation to the emaciated figures, so frequently found in our cathedrals connected with the monuments of bishops, abbots, &c. for I am clear it was not confined to these only, having seen the same device under the figure of a lusty well-fed knight; I shall be much pleased if my brother antiquaries will admit the following reasons as conclusive on this subject.

During my travels on the continent, a predilection for mat ters of antiquity made me seldom pass by any cathedral or old abbey without an interior visit. In several of both these denominations, I repeatedly found the same figure attached to some capital monument, with this difference, that the conductor or monk himself, appointed to shew the premises, never annexed the improbable story of fasting*, &c. I remember seeing one of this kind in the church belonging to the priory of Celestin monks at Heverle, near the town of Louvain in Brabant. I was particularly directed to this figure as an object worthy of my curiosity; it is placed over a monument of a Duke de Croy, and represents a cadaver. in the same state nearly as in our English cathedrals, with this horrible yet admirable singularity, that the worms are seen in various parts destroying the body; it is of the finest white marble, and executed in the most masterly manner; yet being so natural and such a melancholy object, few people give it that attention it deserves. From hence I would: infer, that, whatever might give rise to the same story told in most of our cathedral or monastic churches, it cannot be applicable to all, but seems to have been the taste of the sculptors of that age, and no improper picture of death and the corruptibility of the body, at the same time conveying an useful though humiliating lesson to persons of high. dignity. I sincerely wish that all fabulous traditions may be exploded; and for that reason I felt a secret satisfaction on visiting once more, at my last journey to London, the tombs. in Westminster abbey, that the verger no longer amuses the gaping vulgar with the idle story of the lady who died by the prick of a needle in her fiuger, when it is evident to the most common judgment, that the figure is painting to a death's head below.

1784, May.

Observator.

As

XCV. Ancient Customs elucidated.

$1. The Feast of Fule.-Mothering Sunday.

MR. URBAN,

a correspondent of yours is desirous, amongst other

*In Canterbury cathedral there is a like emaciated figure under the fine monument of Abp. Chicheley, of whom no such story is recorded.