66 DIARY OF WILLIAM WHITEWAY. 



richly engraved and inlaid. The Queen attended with her maids of 

 honour and courtiers ; and the whole scene presented a gorgeous 

 spectacle. The combats were rather a display of horsemanship and 

 skill in the use of the lance than serious engagements. In preparing for 

 this and similar spectacles the knights and nobles practised by tilting at 

 a ring, or at the qidntain in some other form. It was presumably in this 

 exercise that the Earl of Oxford met with the misfortune which Mr. 

 Whiteway records. 



April. The end of this month my Lord Digby, Earl of Bristol, 

 came home out of his long embassage in Spain. The Countess 

 landed at Weymouth. 



The 28th of April this year Co' James Gould was married to his 

 wife at Bloxworth, and the next day brought her home. 



Sept. 1. Sir Robert Mellor died at the Bath, and was buried at 

 Came at midnight, Mr. Guy preaching. 



" The tomb and effigy of Sir John Mellor, his father, will be found on 

 the north side of the chancel of Came Church. The memorial to Dorothy 

 Mellor, wife of Sir Robert Mellor, on the south side of the chancel. 



It was a custom for some hundreds of years and up to the beginning of 

 the present century for persons of wealth and position to be buried at 

 midnight by torchlight. 



Andrews, in his " Curiosities of the Church," states that at the funeral 

 of the Earl of Northumberland in 1489 many thousands of torches were 

 carried. 



It is possible that the practices of burying suicides at night, and 

 criminals executed for murder in cross roads at midnight with a stake 

 driven through them, may have brought the custom into disrepute. 



7th of this month 6 houses were burnt at Poole about midnight 

 and a day before one house at Blandford. 



Sep. 26. Co. James Gould the younger was married at Exeter 

 to Mr. Marshall's daughter. 



Oct. 2. This night there was an extraordinary storm of rain and 

 wind which blew down many houses and threw many great trees 

 and cast away many ships in all parts. Amongst them were four 

 at Melcombe two of these were Frenchmen; there were eleven 

 Frenchmen drowned in the same. 



" Mr. Matthew Pitt, of Weymouth, died in London the 18th 

 April, and was buried there by night, two days after ; in his place 



