Henry I., 35 years 3 months 27 days; Henry II., 34 years 6 months 17 days; Edward I., 34 years 7 months 18 days; Henry VI., 38 years 6 months and 4 days; Henry VIII., 37 years 9 months 7 days; Charles II. + Cromwell, 36 years 8 days; George II., 33 years 4 months 15 days.
Elizabeth, 44 years 4 months 8 days.
Henry III., 56 years 20 days; Edward III., 50 years 4 months 28 days; George III., 59 years 3 months 4 days.
Sow (A), a machine of war. It was a wooden shed which went on wheels, the roof being ridged like a hog’s back. Being thrust close to the wall of a place besieged, it served to protect the besieging party from the arrows hurled against them from the walls. When the countess of March (called “Black Agnes”), in 1335, saw one of those engines advancing towards her castle, she called out to the earl of Salisbury, who commanded the engineers:
Beware Montagow,
For farrow shall thy sow;
and then had such a huge fragment of rock rolled on the engine that it dashed it to pieces. When she saw the English soldiers running away, the countess called out, “Lo! lo! the litter of English pigs!”
Sow of Dallweir, named “Henwen,” went burrowing through Wales, and leaving in one place a grain of barley, in another a little pig, a few bees, a grain or two of wheat, and so on, and these made the places celebrated for the particular produce ever after.
It is supposed that the sow was really a ship, and that the keeper of the sow, named Coll ab Collfrewi, was the captain of the vessel.--Welsh Triads, lvi.
Sowerberry, the parochial undertaker, to whom Oliver Twist is bound when he quits the workhouse. Sowerberry was not a badly disposed man, and he treated Oliver with a certain measure of kindness and consideration; but Oliver was ill-treated by Mrs. Sowerberry, and bullied by a big boy called Noah Claypole. Being one day greatly exasperated by the bully, Oliver gave him a thorough “drubbing,” whereupon Charlotte, the maidservant, set upon him like a fury, scratched his face, and held him fast till Noah Claypole had pummelled him within an inch of his life. Three against one was too much for the lad, so he ran away.--C. Dickens, Oliver Twist (1837).