Nhrsl.
Poem on the Burning of the Houses of Parliament (Vol. v., p. 488.).—As this doggerel is written on the same plan as our old friend "This is the House that Jack built," it will be sufficient to give the last paragraph, which of course embraces the whole. I copy from a newspaper cutting, but from what newspaper I am ignorant. It is printed consecutively (as I send it), and not with reference to the metre.
"This is the Peer, who in town being resident, signed the report for the absent Lord President, and said that the history, was cleared of its mystery, by Whitbread the waiter, adding his negatur, to that of John Riddle, who laugh'd and said 'Fiddle!' when told Mr. Cooper of Drury Lane, had been down to Dudley and back again, and had heard the same day, a bagman say, that the house was a-blazing, a thing quite amazing, even to John Snell, who knew very well, by the smoke and the heat, that was broiling his feet, through his great thick boots in the Black Rod's seat, that Dick Reynolds was right, that the fires were too bright, heaped up to such an unconscionable height, in spite of the fright, they gave poor Mistress Wright, when she sent to Josh. Cross, so full of his sauce, both to her and to Weobly, who'd heard so feebly, the directions of Phipps, when he told him the chips, might be burnt in the flues, yet never sent the news, as he ought to Milne, who'd have burnt in a kiln, these confounded old sticks, and not heated the bricks, nor set fire to the house that Josh. burnt."
Cranmore.
Large Families (Vol. v., pp. 204. 357.).—In a MS. commonplace-book of the year 1787 et seq., I find two notes which may be added to your curious collection of large families.
"In the church of Abberconway is a stone with this inscription: 'Here lyeth the body of Nichlas Hooker, who was the one and fortieth child of his father by Alice his only wife, and the father of seven and twenty children by one wife. He died the 20th of March, 1637.'"
The other entry is as follows:—
"The following well-attested fact is copied from Brand's History of Newcastle:—
"'A weaver in Scotland had by one wife (a Scotch-woman) sixty-two children, all living till they were baptized; of whom four daughters only lived to be women, and forty six sons attained to man's estate.'"
Anon.
The following instance of a large family by one woman is gravely related by Master Richard Verstegan, in his Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities, p. 3. edit. 1655; and which, it must be confessed, is enough to frighten any day labourer "out of his seven senses:"—