—There is no doubt but that nearly all country parishes paid at one time for the destruction of different kinds of vermin; but this practice is now entirely discontinued. The following are the prices paid twenty-five years ago by the parish of Corsham, Wilts:—
Vipers, 6d. each; slowworms or blindworms, 3d. each; rats, 1d. each (the tails only were required to be brought); sparrows' heads, 6d. per dozen, (meaning the old birds); sparrows' eggs and young birds, 4d. per dozen.
I shall never forget, when a boy, and my father was churchwarden, the tricks the young lads and boys used to play in order to palm off other birds' eggs and young birds for sparrows. One young rascal actually painted the eggs very cleverly to imitate the sparrows, till I discovered it. Young birds of all kinds were brought, and many dozens paid for that were not sparrows; as it was impossible to tell the young birds of many of the hard billed kinds from the sparrow. At last the parish gave up paying for the eggs or young birds, but gave 1s. per dozen for the heads of old sparrows, and vast numbers were brought throughout the winter; and then attempts were made to substitute other birds' heads, which were in many cases paid for. The next year the parish agreed only to pay for the whole birds, so that no deception could be practised. When the New Poor Law came into operation, all these payments were stopped. Glead was a provincial term for the kite and buzzard, the ringtail for the hen harrier hawk, and greashead or greyhead for the female kestrel or greyheaded falcon. In most of the Wiltshire parishes 6d. per head was paid for the hedgehog, as the farmers always believed they sucked the teats of cows when laid down in the fields. The badger was also paid for in some places.
J. K.
North Wilts.
Alterius Orbis Papa (Vol. iii., p. 497.).
—The origin of this title is, I think, still open to explanation, and in offering one which I find recorded in Lambard's Perambulation of Kent, 1596, pp. 80, 81. I trust the quaint but interesting style of that learned antiquary and historian will be a sufficient excuse to your readers for its insertion at length verbatim et literatim:
"The whole Province of this Bishopricke of Canterbury, was at the first divided by Theodorus (the seventh Bishop) into five Dioceses only: howbeit, in processe of time it grew to twentie and one, besides itselfe, leaving to Yorke (which by the first institution should have had as many as it) but Durham, Carleil, and Chester only. And whereas by the same ordinance of Gregorie, neither of these Archbishops ought to be inferiour to other, save onely in respect of the priority of their consecration, Lanfranc (thinking it good reason that he should make a conquest of the English clergie, since his maister, King William, had vanquished the whole nation), contended at Windsor with Thomas Norman (Archbishop of Yorke) for the primacie, and there (by judgement before Hugo, the Pope's Legate) recovered it from him: so that ever since the one is called Totius Angliæ primas, and the other Angliæ primas, without any further addition. Of which judgement, one (forsooth) hath yielded this great reason: that even as the Kentish people, by an auncient prerogative of manhood, do challenge the first front in each battel, from the Inhabitants of other countries; so the Archbishop of their Shyre, ought by good congruence to be preferred before the rest of the Bishops of the whole Realme. Moreover, whereas before time, the place of this Archbishop in the generall Councell was to sit next to the Bishop of Sainct Ruffines, Anselmus, the successor of this Lanfranc (for recompence of the good service that hee had done, in ruffling against Priests' wives, and resisting the King for the investiture of clerks) was by Pope Urbane endowed with this accession of honour, that he and his Successours should from thencefoorth have place in all generall councels, at the Pope's right foote, who then said withall. 'Includamus hunc in orbe nostro, tanquam alterius orbis Papam.'"
FRANCISCUS.