Vandyke.
Riddles.—It would take up too much of your valuable time and space to insert all the riddles for which correspondents cannot find answers; but will you find means to ask, through your pages, if any clever Œdipus would allow me to communicate to him certain enigmas which puzzle me greatly, and which I should very much like to have solved.
Rubi.
Straw Bail.—Fielding, in his Life of Jonathan Wild, book i. chap. ii., relates that Jonathan's aunt
"Charity took to husband an eminent gentleman, whose name I cannot learn; but who was famous for so friendly a disposition, that he was bail for above a hundred persons in one year. He had likewise the remarkable humour of walking in Westminster Hall with a straw in his shoe."
What was the practice here referred to, and what is the origin of the expression "a man of straw," which is commonly applied to any one who appears, or pretends to be, but is not, a man of property?
Straw bail is, I believe, a term still used by attorneys to distinguish insufficient bail from "justifiable" or sufficient bail.
J. Lewelyn Curtis.
Wages in the West in 1642.—The Marquis of Hertford and Lord Poulett were very active in the West in the year 1642. In the famous collection of pamphlets in the British Museum (113, 69.) is contained Lord Poulett's speech at Wells, Somerset:
"His lordship, with many imprecations, oaths, and execrations (in the height of fury), said that it was not fit for any yeoman to have allowed him from his own labours any more than the poor moiety of ten pounds a-year; and when the power shall be totally on their side, they shall be compelled to live on that low allowance, notwithstanding their estates are gotten with a great deal of labour and industry.
"Upon this the people attempted to lay violent hands upon Lord Poulett, who was saved by a regiment marching in or by at the moment."