Coffins for General Use.—In the parish church of Easingwold, Yorkshire, there was within the last few years an old oaken shell or coffin, asserted to have been used by the inhabitants for the interment of their dead. After the burial, the coffin was again deposited in the church. Are there any other well-authenticated instances of a similar usage? And do the words of the rubric in the Order for "the Burial of the Dead," "When they come to the grave, while the corpse is made ready to be laid INTO the earth," render it probable that such a custom was generally prevalent in the Anglican church since the Reformation?
I have met with one corroborative circumstance, in which numbers of bodies were disinterred in a piece of ground supposed to have been consecrated, and not a vestige of a coffin was found.
Incognitus.
The Surname Bywater.—Can any of your correspondents furnish me with particulars relating to the surname "Bywater?"
The earliest period from which I can trace it direct to the present day, and then only by family tradition, is about the close of the seventeenth century, or say 1680, about which time "—— Bywater" married Miss Witham, and resided at Towton Hall, near Tadcaster, Yorkshire, a place celebrated as being the field of a battle fought between the York and Lancaster forces on Palm Sunday, 1461.
Stow mentions, in his Survey, that "John Bywater" was a Sheriff of London in 1424.
Perhaps some of your readers, in Yorkshire or elsewhere, can throw a light on the subject, or can refer me to a book or MS. where information may be obtained?
W. M. B.
Robert Forbes.—I should be glad if any of your correspondents could furnish me with any particulars relative to this talented and eccentric individual. He was the author of The Dominie Deposed, in the Buchan dialect. On the title-page of that piece he is described as "Robert Forbes, A.M., Schoolmaster of Peterculter," near Aberdeen. On application, however, to the Session Clerk of Peterculter, that functionary states that no such person was ever schoolmaster of that parish. Be this as it may, Forbes was obliged to leave Scotland on account of an intrigue, which he has humorously described in his Dominie Deposed. He appears to have removed to London, where he commenced the business of a hosier, in a shop on Tower Hill, at the sign of the "Book." Here he composed that
celebrated travestie on the Speech of Ajax to the Grecian Chiefs, also in the Buchan dialect: