5. The prodigal to the deaths.
6. The monopolizers to the hopes of a wet and bad harvest.
7. The boarding-school and all other young misses, to all matters relative to Gretna Green.
Fires in London.
From the registry of fires for one year, commencing Michaelmas 1805, it appears, that there were 366 alarms of fire, attended with little damage; 31 serious fires, and 155 alarms occasioned by chimneys being on fire, amounting in all to 552 accidents of this nature. The offices calculate on an alarm of fire every day, and about eight serious fires in every quarter of the year.
Henry VIII. and his Peers.
When we advert to early parts of the history of this country, we cannot but be thankful to heaven for the progress of just principles, and the security we derive from the laws. In the reign of Henry VIII. that monarch wanted to carry some measure through the house of lords, contrary to its wishes. The peers hesitated in the morning, but consented in the afternoon. Some of their body waited on him to inform him thereof, when the tyrant made reply, “It is well you did it, or by this time half your heads would have been upon Temple Bar.”
Female Sheriffs and Justices.
Nicholas, earl of Thanet, was succeeded by his next brother John, the fourth earl, born 7th August, 1638. He also succeeded his mother Margaret, countess of Thanet, as baron Clifford, Westmoreland, and Vescey, who by her last will, dated June 19, 1676, gave the Yorkshire and Westmoreland estates to this John for life; she died the 14th August following, and he then succeeded her in the sheriffdoms of Westmoreland and Cumberland, where it frequently happened that female heiresses became possessed of them.
There are several instances of women bearing that office, as may be seen in most of the treatises in which that duty is mentioned. Those things required by it, not proper to be undertaken by a female, were intrusted to a deputy, or shire clerk.