By the Rev. Canon Eddrup. 



15 



Half of the penalty is to go to the poor of the parish and half to 

 the informer. Section viii. re-enacts the second clause of the Act 

 of 1666, which declared that in the case of persons dying of the 

 plague no penalty should he incurred although they were not buried 

 in such manner as was directed by the Act. Section ix. appoints 

 that * k this Act shall be publiquely read upon the first Sunday after 

 the Feast of St. Bartholomew every yeare for seaven yeares next 

 following, presently after Divine Service." 



An illustration of the observance of this Act may be found in an 

 amusing book of travels of this period, written in French and 

 translated into English. In 1698 there was published at the Hague 

 a volume in small Svo by H. M. de V., i.e., Henri Misson de 

 Valbourg; it became popular enough to obtain translation into 

 English, and in 1719 it came out in London as " M. Misson's 

 Memoirs and Observations in his Travels over England, &c, disposed 

 in Alphabetical Order, written originally in French and translated 

 by Mr. Ozell." This work is dedicated to Sir James Bateman, and 

 in the preface (p. vii.) the translator, relating an interview which 

 he had had with Sir James, says, " I told him I had heard his Son 

 was a perfect gentleman, even without being vicious." There are 

 many curious and amusing observations on such points relating to 

 manners and customs as might attract the notice of a foreigner : 

 such as the choosing kings and queens on Twelfth Night; the 

 making mince pies at Christmas, of the composition of which delicacy 

 he gives an elaborate account ; ceremonies observed at marriages 

 and funerals, such as the carrying of a sprig of rosemary in the 

 hand, which each person threw in after the coffin. Sir Henry Ellis 

 has frequently availed himself of Misson's Travels in his notes to 

 his edition of Brand's Popular Antiquities. 



Among other things Misson is struck with this, as it seems to 

 him, strange custom of burying in woollen, about which he says 

 (p. 88 : in the French edition, p. 130), " There is an Act of Parlia- 

 ment which ordains that the dead shall be buried in a woollen stuff 

 which is a kind of thin bays, which they call flannel ; nor is it lawful 

 to use the least needleful of thread or silk. (The intention of this 

 Act is for the encouragement of the woollen manufacture.) This 



