Papworth St. Agnes, July 8. 1851.

Written Sermons (Vol. iii., p. 478.).

—Your querist M. C. L. may be referred to Dr. Short's History of the Church of England, § 223.; or to Burnet's Reformation, vol. i. p. 317., folio; where he will find that the practice commenced about the year 1542.

N. E. R. (a Subscriber.)

FEST SITTINGS.
(Vol. iii., pp. 328. 396.)

Not questioning the meaning given to the word Fest by R. VINCENT, I take leave to refer you to Dr. Willan's list of words in use in the mountainous districts of the West Riding of Yorkshire, in the seventeenth volume of the Archæologia. You will there find: "FEST, to board from home." The word is used in that sense at the present time. A gentleman resident in the West Riding writes to me:

"I have heard the term 'fest' used generally as applying to sending out cattle to pasture, and so says Carr in his Dialect of Craven. I have also frequently heard it used in this manner: 'I have fest my lad out apprentice to so and so.' In my own neighbourhood, in the West Riding, it is a frequent practice for poor man who possesses a cow, but no pasture, to 'fest' her with some occupier of land at a certain sum by the week, or for some other term. So a gamekeeper is said 'to fest' his master's pointer, when he agrees with a farmer to keep it for a time. In these cases the boy, the cow, the pointer, 'are boarded from home.'"

As to "statutes" or "sittings," the word "statutes" is explained in Blount's Dictionary as follows:

"It is also used in our vulgar discourse for the Petty Sessions which are yearly kept for the disposing of servants in service by the statute 5 Eliz. chap. iv." (§ 48.)

See in the Archaic and Provincial Dictionary, "SITTINGS" and "STATUTE." In Holderness (I collect it from the Query of F. R. H.) the term "sittings" is used in the same sense as "statute" in the West Riding, and in many other parts of the kingdom. "Fest sittings" appear then to mean "the annual assemblage of servants who hire themselves to board from home." In many places the "statute" or "stattie" is connected with the fair.