260 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 257. 



had foreseen, a troop of crop-headed parliament- 

 arists now made their appearance before his doors 

 and sought admittance. Mr. Berkeley was ill in 

 bed, and could not be seen. Fudge ! they must 

 see him. So they go to his bed-side. " So you 

 were fighting against us at Worcester to-day, were 

 you ? " say the crop-heads. " Me ! " says Mr. 

 Berkeley, faintly and innocently ; " why, I am sick, 

 and forced to keep my bed." " All very fine," 

 say the crop-heads, " but you were there, my dear 

 sir, for you rode a piebald charger, and were vei*y 

 conspicuous." " It could not have been me," says 

 the sick man, " for though I certainly do ride a 

 piebald charger when I am in health, yet he has 

 never been out of the stable all day. If you doubt 

 my word, you had better go to the stable and 

 satisfy yourselves." So the crop-heads go to the 

 stable, and there, of course, find piebald No. 2. as 

 fresh as a daisy, and evidently no# from Worcester. 

 So they conclude that they had mistaken their 

 man, and leave the sick Mr. Berkeley to get well, 

 and laugh over the ruse he has so successfully 

 played upon them. 



Not far from Cotheridge, on the Bransford road, 

 is an old roadside inn called " The White-hall," 

 opposite to which is a cottage, the remnant of a 

 larger house which stood there in 1651. A family 

 of the name of Davis possessed it, and their 

 descendants live there to this day. It has been 

 traditionally handed down in the family, that, after 

 the battle of Worcester, some of Cromwell's 

 troopers came to the house and demanded refresh- 

 ment. The woman brought it out, and said, 

 " Before I give it you, I must ask who will pay 

 me ? " Upon which one of the troopers said, 

 " Here is he who will pay you ! " and, drawing his 

 sword, flourished it in the woman's face. 



CUTHBEBT BeDE, B. A. 



HIGH CHTJECH AND LOW CHUECH. 



(^Continued from Vol. ix., p. 97.) 



Any Notes on the present subject would be 

 imperfect without a reference to some of the 

 voluminous writings of the author of Robinson 

 Crusoe, the indomitable Daniel De Foe.* It is 



* The labours of Dr. Towers, Mr. Chalmers, Sir W. 

 Scott, Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Hazlitt, &c., serve to show 

 that De Foe is appreciated as he deserves by many, 

 though the value of his writings be not known to the 

 public generally. 



Mr. Wilson's Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel 

 De Foe, London, 1830, 3 vols. 8vo., though the work of a 

 thorough partisan, is yet a most valuable book, replete 

 with information on the party history of that time. I 

 have derived much assistance from it in writing the pre- 

 sent Note, though I have most of the rarer books I quote 

 in my own possession. In the preface, Mr. Wilson de- 

 clares that he has made large collections concerning De 



necessary to notice, also, some of the writings of 

 Charles Leslie the Nonjuror, who is styled by 

 Puritan writers the great champion of High 

 Churchmen — the Corypliseus of his party. 



De Foe's most celebrated pamphlet is thus 

 entitled : 



" The Shortest Way with the Dissenters ; or, Proposals 

 for the" Establishment of the Church. London: printed 

 in the year 1702. 4to., pp. 29." 



The irony of this satire was so exquisite, that it 

 deceived both High and Low ; and many of the 

 more violent of the former party welcomed it as an 

 admirable production. When the writer was found 

 out, and his scope perceived, the fury and indigna- 

 tion of High Churchmen knew no bounds. De Foe 

 was prosecuted for libel, and condemned to pay a 

 fine of 200 marks to the queen*, to stand three times 

 in the pillory, to be imprisoned during the queen's 

 pleasure, and to find sureties for his good beha- 

 viour for seven years. A High-Church writer 

 thus speaks of the pamphlet : 



" It passed currently as the work of one of those they 

 called High Churchmen ; and though the pretended zeal 

 and earnestness of the author, to have the Dissenters 

 treated according to their deserts, was universally con- 

 demned by Churchmen in general, yet it served the pur- 

 pose well enough to brand that whole body with blood- 

 thirstiness and a persecuting spirit, till, by the diligence of 

 the government, it appeared that no Churchman had been 

 so little a Christian ; but that it was done by one of the 

 chief scribes of the other party with a mere design to 

 halloo the mob to make the world believe that the Dissenters' 

 throats were to be cut the shortest way, and to provoke these 

 to begin first for their own preservation ; for which wicked 

 attempt the author had his just reward. But the party 

 were so little ashamed of it, that whenever it was objected 

 agaiust them, it was only grinned off as a piece of wit aod 

 management." f 



To complete the punishment, the book was 

 burnt by the hands of the common hangman by 

 order of Parliament. However, the man who 

 wrote a " Hymn to the Pillory" was not likely to 



Foe's antagonists, sufficient to form a companion volume. 

 I am not aware that this ever appeared ; it would have 

 been a valuable addition. In a note he remarks, that 

 " Mr. Stace has probably one of the largest collections of 

 De Foe's works that is" to be found in the kingdom. It 

 consists altogether of more than a hundred pieces, and I 

 understand is now offered for sale." What became of this 

 collection.' Much information may be derived also from 

 De Foe's Essay on the History of Parties and Persecution 

 in Britain . . . London, 1711, 8vo., pp. 48; and from The 

 History of Faction, alias Hypocrisy, alias Moderation . . . 

 London, pp. 176, ascribed to Colonel Tufton. 



* By De Foe's long imprisonment on this occasion, he 

 lost upwards of 3500/., and was reduced to ruin. 



t "A Caveat against the Whigs, in a Short His- 

 torical View of their Transactions. Wherein are dis- 

 covered their manj^ Attempts and Contrivances against 

 the established Government, both in Church and State, 

 since the Restoration of King Charles II. London : 1711, 

 8vo." The third and fourth parts of this work were pub- 

 lished in 1712. The passage above cited is from Part IV., 

 pp. 38, 39. 



