STRAY NOTES, PREHISTORIC, SAXON, AND NORMAN. 231 



Mussalman Coolies in our West India sugar plantations, wherein the 

 model of a Tomb is carried about from place to place with great 

 pomp and ceremony, and, whenever stationary, a fight taking place, 

 ending in the precipitation of the Tazia or Tomb (like the Ward- 

 staffe) either into the sea or sotne other watercourse; a play well 

 known in India as commemorating a memorable defeat and a 

 martyr's death, both of which find an important place in Muham- 

 madan annals. 



John Rouse, quoted by Strutt, says that Hock-Tuesday was dis- 

 tinguished by various sportive pastimes, in which the townspeople, 

 divided into parties, were accustomed to draw each other with ropes. 

 Spelman " speaks of men and women binding each other, and 

 especially the women the men, and Cowel of the men hocking the 

 women on Monday and the women the men on Tuesday. 



Three origins for this Hock-tide custom have been suggested by 

 Mr. Denne in the 7th volume of the " Arch^ologia " (from which, 

 indeed, Strutt gained most of his information on the subject), viz. 

 (i) the remains of heathen customs introduced by the Romans and 

 afterwards kept up by the Saxons ; (2) the defeat of the Danes by 

 the English, a.d. 1002 ; and (3) the death of Hardicanute in 1041, 

 by which England was finally delivered from the Danes. 



The records, then, all more or less agree in assigning the origin 

 of Hock-tide to Saxon times and the ceremony of The Cutting or 

 Tallying of the Wardstaffe to the same period. 



In Navestock, as we have already noticed, the ceremony took 

 place at " Three Wants Lane," a spot which up to the present I have 

 been unable to identify with any degree of certainty. 



One other fact in connection with the Wardstaffe remains to be 

 noted, and that is the place to which such staffe was wont to be 

 carried, presumably to the most important Manor House in the 

 district. Now, so far back as the records carry us, that would be 

 Navestock Manor. But we find that the Wardstaffe, as a matter of 

 fact, was lodged with the Lord of the Manor of Loft Hall, the site 

 of which is now represented by the farmhouse situated upon our 

 Heath, and known as " Loft Hall." This house, as I am informed 

 by Mr. Pratt of Loft Hall, is still bounded if not surrotinded by the 

 remains of an ancient moat. 



I im not at present in a position to quote any earlier reference 

 to Loft Hall than the year T356, when James de Barwe released to 

 Master John Barnet, Canon of St. Paul's, all his right in certain 



