sooner swallowed that sweet candied baite, but straight their wits forsake them, and they runne starke mad, assembling in routs and throngs numberlesse of ungovernable numbers, with uncivill civill commotions.

"Then Tim Tatters-a most valiant villaine-with an ensign made of a piece of a baker's maukin* fixed upon a broome-staffe, he displaies his dreadful colours, and calling the ragged regiment together, makes an illiterate oration, stuft with most plentifull want of discretion, the conclusion whereof is, that somewhat they will doe, but what they know not; untill at last comes marching up another troupe of tatterdemalions, proclayming wars against no matter who, so they may be doing. Then these youths arm'd with cudgels, stones, hammers, rules, trowels, and handsawes, put play-houses to the sacke, and *** to the spoyle, in the quarrel breaking a thousand quarrelst-of glasse, I meane-making ambitious brickbats breake their neckes, tumbling from the tops of lofty chimnies, terribly untyling houses, ripping up the bowels of feather beds, to the inriching of upholsters, the profit

Brand, who quotes this last paragraph, says that he does not know what to make of it, and Sir H. Ellis, after having twice edited the work, is, according to his general custom on such occasions, as mute as a Pythagorean. There is however no difficulty whatever in the passage. A maukin, or as it is sometimes written, malkin, is explained by Minshew to be "instrumentum quo verruntur furni calescentes," i.e. an instrument by which ovens are swept out; and it farther appears from him that the word was used either for a broom or a dishclout. Cotgrave too says "A maulkin to make clean an oven, Patrouille, fourbalet, stroffignolo del forno." Here it means the baker's dishclout, which was fastened to a pole as a flag for the merry rout, and borne aloft by Tim Tatters-i.e. Tatterdemalion-a fanciful, and not inappropriate, designation for the leader of the ragged regiment."

It is perhaps hardly necessary to remind the reader that this is a pun upon the secondary meaning of the word " quarrel," i.e. a pane of glass, from the Latin, quadrum.

of plaisterers and dirt-dawbers, the gaine of glasiers, joyners, carpenters, tylers, and bricklayers; and, which is worse, to the contempt of justice; for what avails it for a constable with an army of reverend rusty bill-men to command peace to these beastes, for they with their pockets, instead of pistols, well charged with stone-shot, discharge against the image of authority whole volleys as thicke as hayle, which robustious repulse puts the better sort to the worser part, making the band of unscowred halberdiers retyre faster than ever they come on, and shew exceeding discretion in proving tall men of their heeles. Thus, by the unmanerly maners of Shrove Tuesday, constables are baffled, punckes are pillaged, panders are plagued, and the chiefe commanders of these valourous villiacoes, for their reward of all this confusion, doe in conclusion purchase the inheritance of a jayle, to the commodity of jailers, and the discommodity to themselves, with a fearfull expectation that Tiburne shall stoppe their throats, and the hangman take possession of their coates, or that some beadle in bloody characters shall imprint their faults on their shoulders. So much for Shrove Tuesday, Jacke-a-Lent's gentleman usher; these have beene his humours in former times, but I have some better hope of reformation in him hereafter and indeed I wrote this before his coming this yeere 1617, not knowing how hee would behave himselfe; but tottering betwixt despaire and hope I leave him."

With the apprentices of London this season was more particularly a time of revel; according to Dekker they "take the lawe into their own hands and doe what they liste.' One of their amusements was hunting and beating the poor creatures of the town, and it has been suggested from certain passages in the old dramatists that it was the custom at this period of the year for the consta

"Seven Deadly Sins of London." Quarto, 1606, p. 35.

bles to search out women of ill fame, and to confine them during Lent, while a still more degenerate class were carted. Evidences of both these habits may be gathered from the following passages. SENSUALITY says in Microcosmos (Act 5) —“ But now welcome a cart, or a Shrove Tuesday's Tragedy." Again, in Nabbes' comedy, called TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD, quarto, London, 1638, p. 6-" If I doe, I have lesse mercy than prentices at Shrove tide." Still more striking is a passage in a Satyre against Separatists, quarto, London, 1765; and other passages there are, but somewhat too coarse for the delicacy of modern ears, when vice may be tolerated, but must not be named, and we shall therefore content ourselves with merely referring to them for the gratification of the curious.-Second Part of the " Honest Whore," quarto, London, 1630. L. 6. et seq.

As to the carting part of the story in the first of the above extracts, though it has been overlooked by Brand and his commentator, to ride in a cart was from very remote times reckoned ignominious; thus, in the old romance of Launcelot de Lac, we are told "en ce temps la estoit accoutumée que Charette estoit si vil que nul' n'estoit dedans qui tout loz et tout honneur n'eust perdu; et quant s'invouloit a aucun tollir honneur si le faisoit s'en monter en un charette; car charette servit en ce temps la de ceque pilloris servent orendroit; ne en chascune bonne ville n'en avoit, en ce temps la, que une " -in those days it was the custom to consider the cart so base, that no one could be in it without losing all fame and all honour; and when it was wished to deprive any one of his reputation, he was made to mount in a cart; for the cart served at that time for what pillories serve now; nor in those days in each good town was there more than one.

Another amusement, if amusement it can be called,

and which prevailed both in court and country, was the tying of a cock to a stake, and flinging sticks at the poor bird till it was beaten to death. If well trained it would often elude for a long time the missiles of its persecutors, thereby earning a considerable sum of money for its master; and, when killed, it was put into a hat, and won a second time by the person, who could strike it out. Erasmus accounts for this cruel folly by observing in an ironical tone that the English eat on Shrove Tuesday "quoddam placentæ genus," a certain kind of cake-meaning thereby pancakes—“ quo comesto protinus insaniunt et gallos trucidant;" which being devoured they immediately run mad, and kill the cocks.

This brutal custom has been variously derived. Some assert that it originated in an old story of the discovery of an adulterous amour by the crowing of a cock, which we need hardly say is utter nonsense; others have thought that the cock was thus made to suffer, in punishment for Saint Peter's crime in denying his master, which is no less ridiculous, although we have Sir Charles Sedley's authority for it in the following epigram;

"May'st thou be punished for Saint Peter's crime,
And on Shrove Tuesday perish in thy prime."

A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for July 1783, tells us that he had somewhere heard or read of its being an allusion to the indignities offered to Christ by the Jews before his crucifixion. Cranenstein relates an idle story how "when the Danes were masters of England, and lorded it over the natives of the island, the inhabitants of a certain great city, grown weary of their slavery, had formed a secret conspiracy to murder their masters in one bloody night; and twelve men had undertaken to enter the town-house by a stratagem, and seizing the arms surprize the guard, which kept it; and at which time their fellows upon a signal given were to

come out of their houses and murder all opposers; but when they were putting it in execution, the unusual crowing and fluttering of the cocks about the place they attempted to enter at, discovered their design, upon which the Danes became so enraged that they doubled their cruelty and used them with more severity than ever. Soon after they were freed from the Danish yoke, and to revenge themselves on the cocks for the misfortune they had involved them in, they instituted this custom of knocking them on the head on Shrove Tuesday, the day on which it happened. This sport, though at first only practiced in one city, in process of time became a national divertisement, and has continued ever since the Danes first lost this island."

Were it worth while to refute this absurd version of the geese that by their cackling saved Rome, it might be replied that the Danes never did lose the island, but kept a fast hold of the prey they had once clutched. But the story, like the others before quoted, is sheer nonsense, although they are one and all gravely narrated by Brand, and passed over by Sir Henry Ellis without a comment.

On such occasions it is much better to confess our ignorance than to encrease the mass of error by idle conjectures and yet more idle endeavours to enforce them by a display of reading that leaves the question just where it was. Indeed after all that has been said upon the subject it seems more than probable that it originated in the same passion for brutal amusement, that gave rise to bear-baiting, bull-baiting, and so many sports of the same nature. It should be observed too that the practice was not confined to cocks alone, but extended itself to hens and doves, though this was by no means so general.

Another amusement of the season was what the people