THE ANTIQUARIAN. 217 



Apropos dejigure. The customs of western Europe 

 ill adapt us to admire either the convenience or 

 elegance of the posture in which tailors ply their 

 occupation. In the eye of a Turk or Arab the cross- 

 legged attitude appears neither remarkable nor un- 

 seemly ; and that their taste is born out by high 

 authority we learn from the fact that this manner of 

 seat has the sanction of the highest order of chivalry : 

 whoever has visited the tomb of a knight-templar of 

 St. John of Jerusalem will recognize this at once in 

 his effigy placed, as all their effigies are, in the sar- 

 torial position there. 



With the knights-templars our ideas of the pro- 

 fession, if not the practise, of Christianity are nearly 

 associated. I glance from that, briefly and with 

 diffidence, to observe that the subjects of this essay, 

 like every other rank and class in England, have 

 found their lot cast " in evil report and good report" 

 among men for conscience sake ; happy if only the 

 sufferers preserved that undefiled before Him who 

 trieth spirits ! In the list of sufferers for their re- 

 ligious tenets, 6. Henry VIII. , 1514, we find a 

 tailor named Richard Hunne : this poor artizan was 

 hung in Lollard's Tower, and his body afterwards 

 burned by the executioner in Smithfield ; conscious 

 in his extremity, that he had not suffered martyrdom 

 in vain, but that remuneratio ejus cum Altissimo — 

 his reward was with the Most High. 



About a century prior to this, 14. Henry IV., John 

 Bad by, also a tailor, was brought to the stake in 

 Smithfield for heresy ; the prince, afterwards Henry 

 v., who was present, endeavoured, but without 

 effect, to save the victim's life by advising him to 

 recant: we are told that Richard Courtenay, bishop 

 of Norwich, and at that time chancellor of Oxford, 

 preached a sermon to the recusant. 



I feel satisfaction in observing, that the instances 

 of a darker shade, as regards doctrines professed by 

 persons of this calling — as the fanatic Beiikels, more 

 commonly known as John of Ley den, the anabap- 



VOL. VII. — 1836. DD 



