though somewhat alienated from their original design and institution, retain however so much of their old feature of complexion, as to claim an indisputable relation to some Roman or Grecian solemnity, he would not be startled, as perhaps he was, at the first mention of this opinion. I was tempted here to lay before him an instance or two of this sort, of which I have by me a plentiful collection; but was checked upon the reflection that I but very lately took him out of the road to shew him a prospect, and therefore rather chose to prosecute my journey, to which it is possible he may now have no objection." Elements of Civil Law, P. 357.

I believe most readers will unite with me in lamenting that this learned writer followed his second thoughts in this instance, and will permit me to repeat my hopes that the collection above-mentioned may not be for ever concealed from the public eye.

1795, Sept.

SCIOLUS.

CXXVI. Druidical Customs retained in Cornwall.

MR. URBAN,

IT is a research no less interesting than amusing, to trace back several customs and expressions now used to their Druidical or Saxon original. Tam informed by a friend, that an immemorial and peculiar custom prevails on the sca-coast of the western extremity of Cornwall, of kindling large bonfires on the evening of June 24; and on the next day, the country people, assembling in great crowds, amuse themselves with excursions on the water. For the origin of this, no satisfactory reason can be given; therefore, conjecture is allowable, where certainty cannot be attained. I cannot help thinking it the remains of an ancient Druidical festival, celebrated on Midsummer-day, to implore the friendly influence of Heaven on their fields, compounded with that of the first of May, when the Druids kindled large fires on all their sacred places, and on the tops of all their. cairns, in honour of Bel, or Belinus, the name by which they distinguished the sun, whose revolving course had again clothed the earth with beauty, and diffused joy and gladness through the creation. Their water-parties on the 24th prove, that they consider the summer season as now so fully established, that they are not afraid to commit.

If we reflect on the

themselves to the mercy of the waves. rooted animosity which subsisted between the Romans and Druids, and that the latter, on being expelled from their former residences, found, together with the miserable remnants of the Britons, an asylum in the naturally-fortified parts of the island, we shall not be surprised at their customs having been faintly handed down through such a long succession of ages. That Cornwall was one of their retreats is sufficiently proved by the numerous remains of their circular temples, cromlechs, cairns, &c. though of the sacred groves in which they were embosomed no vestiges now remain. We all know the avidity with which mankind adhere to, and with what reluctance they lay aside, usages delivered down to them by their ancestors, and familiar to themselves. And, when we farther consider the inveterate hatred with which the Romans endeavoured to extirpate the Druidical customs, it is not wonderful that this very circumstance should have been the means of fixing them more deeply in those places where they were preserved; as persecution has in all cases a natural tendency to strengthen what it is its wish to eradicate. Nay even in the eleventh century, when Christianity was become the national religion, the people were so attached to their ancient superstitions, that we find a law of Canute the Great strictly prohibiting all his subjects from paying adoration to the sun, moon, sacred groves and woods, baliowed hills and fountains. If then this propensity to idolatry could not be rooted out of those parts of the kingdom exposed to the continual influx of foreigners, and the horrors of frequent war, how much more must it have flourished in Cornwall, and those parts where the Druids long preserved their authority and influence! It may then be fairly inferred, that, from their remote situation, and comparative insignificancy with the rest of England, they preserved those religious solemnities unmolested; and, corrupted as they must naturally be by long usage and tradition, yet are handed down to us to this day with evident marks of a Druidical origin.

Our holy festival of Christmas retains in some parts of this island, particularly in Lincolnshire, the Saxon appellation of Yule, which was a peculiar solemnity, celebrated about the winter solstice, in honour of Thor, the son of Odin, and frequently conducted, according to the genius of our Saxon ancestors, with the utmost excess of feasting, drink, ing, &c.

1795, April.

PRUIDICUS

CXXVII. Signification of Sempecta and Ferculum.

MR. URBAN,

IN your last volume an inquiry was made after an earlier use of the word Sempecta than is to be found in Ingulphus's account of Croyland Abbey. Not any notice having been since taken of it in your Miscellany, I am induced to repeat the question; and may be allowed the freedom of submitting it to the attention of your learned correspondent at Winchester, than whom I am not apprized of any person more likely to make a satisfactory report? L. E. seems too hastily to have advanced that Sempecta frequently occurs in the Monkish writers.

Antiquariolus, at p. 383, of the present volume, has properly referred the Historian of Evesham Abbey to Ainsworth, instead of Du Fresne, for the meaning of Ferculum, but I rather think that the true rendering of it is a dish or mess, and not a meal; because the members of the great religious houses were careful to have a constant and copious supply for their tables of flesh, fish, and fowl. Well known is the facetious Fuller's (Hist. of Abbeys, b. vi. p. 299) pleasant and true story of the method pursued by King Henry VIII. to bring to a relish of a sirloin of beef an abbot of Reading, "whose weak and squeezie stomach, from a too free indulgence in many choice and high-seasoned viands, would hardly digest the wing of a small rabbit or chicken." And, by one of the statutes of Archbishop Winchelsey for the better government of the members of Christ-church, Canterbury, a restriction to one dish was imposed as a penalty on an offending brother, who, by words or needless actions, should interrupt the lecture enjoined to be read during a meal:

"Item, refectione durante, omnes monachi ad lectionem aures inclinent, nulla intersigna nisi ad refectionem necessaria interim facientes. Et qui contrafecerit, in ipso refectorio in crastino comedens, pane, et potagio, et uno duntaxat ferculo sit contentus; et si id postea iteret, solo pane ac potagio se ibidem reficiat illo die; ac totiens pœnam ipsam sustineat quotiens delictum hujusmodi præsumpserit iterare." (Wilkins, Concil. ii. p. 246.)

Nor were the secular brethren of the hospital of St. Cross, at Winchester, stinted in general to one mess; for, each of the thirteen had daily a loaf of good wheat bread; a sufficient quantity of pottage; three messes at dinner, namely,

one mess called Mortress, made of milk and wastel-bread, one mess of flesh or fish, and one pittance, as the days should require; and one mess for supper; and, on six holy days in the year, one of their messes was roast meat, or fish of a better sort. These articles are particularized by Dr. Lowth, in the Life of William of Wykeham, and I suppose that fer culum, translated mess, may be the word in the original register of the bishop to which he refers.

For the ignorance of the nature of ancient mortuaries imputed to Mr. Warton, it is difficult to account, this perquisite having been generally claimed on the decease or interment of every one possessed of personal chattels, and as the term is so fully illustrated in glossaries and law dictionaries, as also by Bishop Gibson, Dr. Burn, and Judge Blackstone, in their respective Commentaries. In one sense, however, this kind of payment cannot, strictly speaking, be said to have originated with the clergy, because it corresponded to the heriot, to which so many tenants of manors were subject. Sir William Blackstone, therefore, with propriety styles a mortuary a sort of ecclesiastical heriot; and that it was a elaim introduced after the heriot, may be decisively concluded from this circumstance, that the second best of the live stock was due as a mortuary, because to the first, or best, the lord of the manor was entitled for a heriot. Almost all the parochial incumbents could, in former days, maintain a right to a mortuary; and it appears from the underwritten entry in the consistory acts of the diocese of Rochester, that, during the vacancy of the vicarage of Lewisham, this right was vested in the bishop:

"A. 1467, July 27. Sequestratum apud Lewescham 1 equus Joh'is Stretefeld, subito defuncti, tempore vacat vicar' ad d'num ep'um ratione vacat' ibid' pertinentem." Fol. 540, a.

1796, July.

MR. URBAN,

Yours, &c.

W. and D.

I FEAR I shall forfeit the favourable opinion which, it ap pears, your correspondent W. and D. entertains of my autique lore, by his calling for my sentiments upon the longstanding controversy concerning the monastic title of Sempecta, when he shall find that I am capable of adding but very little to the stock of information which he is already possessed of on that subject.

With respect to the derivation of the word Sempecta, it seems plain to me, from its sense and termination, as well

as from the authority of the learned Du Fresne, that it is of Greek original, being a mutilation of the word ouμma. sive ovpñamtwę (qui cum pueris ludit, aut pueros secum habet) forsan etiam a ovuraiswę (simul nutritus). In fact, we learn from Ingulphus, that the chief and distinguishing privilege of the Sempecta was their having a youth to attend upon them, and to keep them company, when they dined separately in their respective cells in the infirmary, as they were allowed to do. "Quinquagenarius autem, in ordine Sempecta vocandus, honestam cameram in infirmitorio, de prioris assignatione accipiat, habeatque clericum scu garcionem suo servitio specialiter attendentem, qui exhibitionem victualium recipiet, de parte abbatis, modo et mensura, quibus ministratur garcioni unius armigeri in abbatis aula. Huic Sempecte unum fratrem juniorem commensalem, tam pro junioris disciplina, quam pro senioris solatio, prior quotidie assignabit." I quote the passage at length, as many of your readers may not have the Historian of Croyland at hand. W. and D. is certainly right in computing the 50 years necessary to constitute a Sempecta, not from the time of his birth, but from that of his religious profession, or making his vows; which ceremony, according to the discipline of the century in question (for, this point varied at different periods), could not take place before the age of 14; hence the Sempecta must, at the very least, have been 64 years old. nasteriis," says the patriarch Pachomius, "non ætas quæritur, sed professio."

"In mo

To speak now of the title itself, or rank of Sempecta. It is certain, indeed, that the patriarch Benedict, as well as the other monastic legislators, shewed a great respect to old age, ordering that the abbot should consult with the monks on particular occasions, and that the juniors should pay due deference to them, and should call them their Nonni when they addressed them. See Reg. c. 63. It is also manifest, that the usual time of acquiring seniority by age, was the 50th year from the monastic profession; on which occasion a ceremony called the jubilee, in allusion to the general jubilees of the Church, and to that of the old law, Levit. xxv. was, at least during the latter centuries, performed in the monasteries of both sexes. On this occasion the jubilarian, as the person in question was called, after the performance of divine service, was conducted to the altar, when a crown of flowers was placed upon his head, and a lighted taper put into his hands, accompanied with suitable prayers and benedictions. In the end, a staff, the emblem of old age, was delivered to him, to support his