By the Rev. W. C. Plenderleath. 317 



" Bursted, Sussex, 1666. Richard Bassett, the old clarke of this 

 parish, who had continued in the office of clarke and sexton for the 

 space of 43 years, whose melody tumbled forth as if he had been 

 thumped on the back with a stone, was buried the 20th Sept." 



" Kyloe, Northumberland. 1696. Buried, Dec. 7. Henry, the 

 son of Henry Watson of Fen wick, who lived to the age ot 36 years 

 and was so great a fool that he never could put on his own close, 

 nor never went a \ mile off y° house in all this space." 



" Bp. Middleton, Durham. A poor maide of Cornforth having 

 a decease in a legge buried Maii 20, 1674." 



I never before heard of a decease in the leg, but I have heard re- 

 peatedly in my own village of an absence in the same, or some other, 

 part of the body, 



I will add here a most charming inscription from the Melton 

 Mowbray book, dated 1670, and written after the fashion dear to 

 lawyers, viz., without a single stop : — 



" Here is a Bill of Burton Lazars of the people which was buried 

 and which was and married above 10 years old for because the dark 

 was dead and therefore they were not set down according as they was 

 But they are all set down sure on nough one among another here in 

 this place." ' 



I must not omit to add that these irregularities in the registration 

 during the time of the Great Rebellion, although very general, were 

 not universal. It is mentioned by Mr. Methuen,in his valuable and 

 exhaustive paper upon the history of All Cannings in the Magazine 

 of our Society (vol. xi., p. 189), that the books were regularly kept 

 and the entries appear to have been made contemporaneously during 



' The English of this gentlemen can be well capped by a piece of Latin 

 ocouring on a monumental slab in Cherhill Church. There are commemorated. 

 on this slab the virtues of a certain good woman who died in her liftj-third year 

 *' .^tatis suse." But when her husband came to die, he, being a man, is recorded 

 on the same slab to have departed in the seventy-third year "^talissui." 

 To persons who do not understand Latin, (in case my paper should chance 

 to fall into the hands of any such) it would be impossible to explain by trans- 

 lation the exquisite absurdity of this piece of grammar. I can only parallel it 

 by saying that it is as if a groom should equip his steed with a man's saddle or a 

 side saddle, not according to the sex of the person about to ride, but according 

 as the animal to be ridden was a horse or a mare ! 



