we could raise a few coppers for gunpowder and crackers, so much the better. I don't remember that we ever made this an occasion for a demonstration against any local "little tyrant of our fields." It was, I think, purely an historical celebration. We were, I am afraid, a terrible lot of bigots. The only Roman Catholic in the village (whom I knew afterwards to be a most estimable man) was looked upon as—and indeed was—a complete outsider. I don't think he had an intimate in the place. "Puseyites" were only one degree less abhorrent. Curiously enough, though Wesleyanism was rife, "Ranters" were almost as bad as Puseyites. The way to heaven was indeed a strait one in those days.
Epworth, April 28th, 1903.
At Bedford Guys are very popular, as one of my own family can testify.
An Episcopal Life-Index.
The following passage relates to Chichester, and is given in A Tour through Great Britain, by A Gentleman, 2nd edition, MDCCXXXVIII., p 204 (the author, it is considered, being Defoe):
"They have a Story in this City, that whenever a Bishop of that Diocese is to die, a Heron comes and sits upon the Pinacle of the Spire of the Cathedral; and that this accordingly happened when Dr. Williams was Bishop. At which Time, a Butcher standing at his Shop Door, in the South-street, seeing it, ran in for his Gun, and being a good Marks-man shot the Heron, and kill'd it, at which his Mother was very angry, and said. He had kill'd the Bishop; and the next Day, they say. News came to the Town, that Bishop Williams was dead; this Story, odd as it is, was affirm'd by many of the Inhabitants."
[If we may accept Defoe, and Defoe writing anonymously at that, as a trustworthy authority on items of folk-belief, then the connection between the fisher-bird and the Bishops of Chichester may possibly be found in the story recorded by Bede, to the effect that it was St. Wilfrid, the first Bishop of the South Saxons, who taught them the fisherman's craft.—Ed.]
