Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/324

262 NOTES AND QUERIES. ri2S.ix.ooT.no2i. Conestable of Halsham, when Robert Lory- mer says he was riding through Halsham and saw many men, women and children assembled before the gate of the manor praising God for his birth ; or at that of Katheririe de la Flauncke when Philip le Roo and William Emmesone said they saw the child baptized, and then carried home, with singing and a great concourse of people, from the church at Walsall in Staffordshire, which was the scene of a like joyful procession for the birth of Ralph Basset. The name of Ralph Basset is connected with strange scenes at the baptism of John de Aylesbury, where one witness was angrily hit in the neck by one of the godfathers for inquiring why the child was called John not Ralph, and where the godfathers and other lords, so a second witness relates, threw pence everywhere on the ground to be scrambled for. Not seldom the parents or friends of the child give the neighbours something ex- pressly for remembrance of the birth, and we find a greyhound, bows, a doe, a green cloak, half a salted buck, a stag's hide, a deerskin, and a pair of deerskin gloves serving thus as memorials. The witnesses seldom bring forward national events in their testimony, but in proving the age of John Janekyn of Sulgrave four witnesses agree that he was born " on the morrow of St. Michael fol- lowing the second autumn after the rainy autumn, in which there was abundant snow and hail " ; and the year of John Walewayn's birth was remembered by an eclipse. * He was born at La Hay, Hereford, on May 1, 1329. Thus it was entered in the psalter of the church, and Joan, his mother, was churched on the very day of the eclipse, on account of which they caused the day to be entered in the red book called the Chronicle. John Wyke fixes the birth of Henry Whissh by the entry of Adam Orlton into the bishopric of Winchester ; and the witnesses to the birth of John de Tychebourne attest it by the burning of the town of Southampton on Tuesday, the feast of St. Faith, in the King's twelfth year, by the King's alien enemies. Local history is fairly plentiful apt to be mixed up with disturbances and disasters. Churches (Atcham, Houghton, Curdworth, Halsham) are desecrated by the shedding of blood, and reconciled. There is the repair of the church of Sulgrave and the story of how twenty carts from that town were at Helmdon fetching stones, and the men of Sulgrave with the carts raised a quarrel and a man was slain. The church at Desborough, when Emma Bardoun was baptized there, had its south aisle levelled to the ground so that the church-goers were much afraid of the cold, and there was at the same time great contention going on in the town on account of the rectory. At the feast of St. Hilary before John de Cracroft was born the belfry of Huttoft in Lincolnshire fell down ; and on the feast of St. Peter's Chains after it the sea broke through the sea-walls at Mablethorp in the same county, and drowned the crops and cattle and lasted for two days or more. Again and again a pilgrimage serves as the reminder most frequently a pilgrimage to Santiago, whither we hear of a party of pilgrims setting out who were all drowned at Dunster. Robert Wai got mentions that he stayed at Santiago a whole year. St. Thomas of Canterbury is also the goal of many pilgrims ; Thomas de Blaunkenay of Dunsby said he had gone thither on pil- grimage annually for 21 years. As might be expected, vows on occasion of illness or of escape from danger are often mentioned as the cause of these journeys. Robert Bagot remembered the year of Robert Bale's birth as that in which his son William started on his journey to the Holy Land ; and Richard del Temple recalls that on the Feast of the Annunciation after the birth of William de Ferariis he had his innocent son William, aged two years, burned by an accident, wherefore he and his wife next day went to Lincoln to do penance. Indeed, when the witnesses bring forward passages of their own experience as tokens of remembrance, these, as might perhaps be expected, are usually violent or sorrowful. Three good men knew the date for the son of Reynold Botereaux by having been robbed and badly wounded the Easter week following on their road to Canterbury. Others served on a coroner's jury in the year required. Several relate the burning of a house or grange. So we hear of a witness who was attacked and left half-dead ; of a man digging in the quarry of Weldon whom the earth fell on and overwhelmed ; of a brother who died at the schools of Oxford ; of a man who became dumb from Michaelmas to Christmas, and of a man who had his brother killed