colnshire, out of 683 churches there are no fewer than 502 with only three bells or less, the large number of 248 (or more than one-third of the whole number in that county) possessing only one; whilst in Bedfordshire, with about 130 churches, 47 of which have only three bells or less, there are only about 20 (and most of these modern ones) in which only one bell is found." The sturdy Bear[1] which "warlike Warwickshire" (22) will bind is that ancient badge and crest of the Earls of Warwick—the bear chained to a ragged staff. Cheshire (33) having been a County Palatine, and "in great measure a separate jurisdiction till the days of Queen Elizabeth," may perhaps on that account have borne the blazon, Chief of men. Its banner, "wherein a man upon a lion rode," certainly reads like a claim to supremacy. The cry of Oxford (21) is one which in its entirety few now-a-days but Keble men would be inclined to consider true, and Cambridge's (18) claim to celebrity I do not understand. The Snaffle, spur, and spear, which are supposed to be the characteristics of Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland, have a warlike sound, and mark times when the "even tenour" of north-country ways was upset by other stirs than those in the coal and iron trades. Three of England's forty counties are here left unnoticed by the poet; they are Cumberland, Westmoreland,[2] and Monmouth.
The local rhyme,[3]
"Aukholme eels and Witham pike
In all England are nane syke,"
- ↑ The Battle of Agincourt [i. 19] has, "Stout Warwickshire, her ancient badge the bear." It is said that Arth, the first Earl of Warwick, adopted the bear as a rebus on his name, and put the staff in its grasp in memory of his victory over a giant who came against him with an uprooted tree as a club. "Bold Beauchamp" (Pol. xviii. [iii. 1007]), called by a footnote a proverb, and said by the text to be applied to any adventurous spirit, was an epithet earned by the hereditary bravery of Earls of the Beauchamp series. "Doughty Douglas" is commemorated in a note, Pol. xxii. [iii. 1071].
- ↑ In the Battle of Agincourt [i. 19] Cumberland's bearing is an armed man and Westmoreland's a wrecked ship.
- ↑ This is as given in Sir C. H. J. Anderson's Lincoln Pocket Guide, p. 6, but there are variants.
