[80a] It has been said, indeed, that mere plucking hurts the fowl but little, as the owners are careful not to pull until the feathers are ripe; that is, until they are just ready to fall; because if forced from the skin before, which is known by blood appearing at the roots, they are of very inferior value. Those plucked after the geese are dead, are also said not to be so good—see Beauties of England, vol. IX. p. 553.
[80b] Gough’s Camden.—Also Beauties of England.
[81] “All this tract (of Marshland) and adjoining fens being little higher than the level of the sea, or that of the rivers that pass through the country, was once so exposed to inundations from floods and high tides, that till dikes and drains were made, it was all one large morass; and even now, after so much labour and expence, the country is still liable to be overflowed by extraordinary high tides or floods, or other casual events. By the evaporation of this water, and especially by that of the water of the numerous ditches, in which various plants and insects die and rot, the atmosphere during the latter part of summer and autumn is filled with moisture, and with putrid and insalutary vapours.—Another cause of the insalubrity of the atmosphere is an imperfect ventilation. As there are no hills here to direct the winds in streams upon the lower grounds, the air is apt to stagnate and become unwholesome. An additional cause of the unhealthiness of this flat and marshy country, may be the impurity of the water in common use; for this being either collected from rains, and preserved in cisterns, or drawn from shallow wells, is, in hot and dry-seasons soon corrupted. This being the case, the general tendency to putrefaction must be increased by the use of such water, as well as by the meats, which in a close, hot, and moist air, are quickly tainted. Several circumstances therefore in this country concur in summer, not only to relax the solids, but to dispose the humours to putrefaction; and as the combination of heat and impure moisture is the great cause of the speedy corruption of animal substances, so it is observed in every place to produce remitting and intermitting fever.”—See Pringle’s Observations on Diseases of the army, pp. 2, 3, 4.
[91] Brief view of the Sufferings and living Testimonies of the Martyrs, p. 392.
[93] Milner’s Letters to a Prebendary, No. 4.
[94a] Challoner’s memoirs of missionary Priests, I. 392, 436.
[94b] This bishop, whose christian name, as it is called, was Lancelot, seems to have been in his day one of the better sort of the men of that order, as appears by the following anecdote, related of him after he had been translated from Ely to Winchester.—Waller, the poet, being one day at court, while James I. was dining, overheard the following conversation between his sacred majesty and two of his bishops, of whom one was Andrews of Winchester, and the other Neale of Durham. These two prelates, standing behind the king’s chair, were asked by him, “If he might not take his subjects’ money when he wanted it, without all the usual formality in parliament?” To which his lordship of Durham readily answered, “God forbid, sir, but you should; you are the breath of our nostrils.” The other being silent, James addressed himself to him, “Well, my lord of Winchester, and what say you?” Andrews replied, that he was “not competent to judge in parliamentary cases.” Upon which the king exclaimed, “No evasions, my lord, I expect an immediate and direct answer to my question!” “Then, sir,” said he, “I think it lawful for you to take my brother Neale’s money, for he offers it.”—It is easy to see that there was some difference between these two bishops, and that the latter was the better man of the two, being by no means so lost to all shame and decency, or so abject a flatterer of majesty as the other. Which of them the majority of their successors have resembled most, may be a point not very easy to determine: nor would it be, perhaps, of very material consequence.
[99] History of the Boroughs, Volume 8.
[100] Hutchesson’s Account—also Beauties of England.
[101] According to Hutchesson they used to dine at a groat a head: but a groat then was equal perhaps to two or three shillings of our money.