Through this fertile land flowed the narrow river, upon the banks of which stood the large and splendid castle, whose owner was the lord of all these parts. A harsh and violent man he was, and drove his only son away from his home. The castle was abandoned after the death of the old man to the reptile and the bat, but the neighbours spoke of a prediction, the tenor of which, repeated in their rude rhyme, was that when the heir should be found, he should by means of twelve milk-white oxen recover the family treasure which had been hidden by the last lord. Generations passed away, and it seemed an idle tale, when a rough, soldier-like looking man came to the Island and gave out that he was the descendant of the banished son, who had died in foreign parts. From an old woman who had taken up her abode in the vaults of the castle, and who was suspected by the country people to be a witch, he learnt the terms of the prophecy, and by her aid discovered the well in which the treasure was hid. Long time elapsed before he could find the twelve milk-white oxen. When found at last, on the very night when all was in readiness, one of the oxen died. Maddened by disappointment, the claimant seized the nearest ox, heedless of its colour, but in mockery caused a white sheet to be sewn around it. Strong ropes were fastened to the bullocks, and the chest of hidden treasure rose slowly from its hiding-place. The man had already placed his hand upon it, when shouts of fiendish laughter rose from below, and at the same time the rope which was attached to the sheeted bullock snapped, and the chest was plunged back to the bottom of the well. Instantly the water began to rise till it flowed over the top of the well. The sky darkened, a fierce storm broke forth; the castle walls tottered and fell in the fury of the elements, the distant sea rolled over its ancient boundary, and the very site of the castle was invisible under the broad sheet of water.

It is to be hoped that success may attend the plan of the Isle of Wight Marine Transit Company in their endeavour to connect the railways of the mainland with those of the Island. The water transit has always been one of the difficulties with which the Isle of Wight has had to contend but with this new system of conveying railway traffic,

there is every reason for thinking that the trade, and consequent prosperity, of our island may make considerable advances.

If the old Court Leet of Brading is to disappear, there seems to be every prospect that the 'Kyng's Towne of Bradynge,' which was once of sufficient importance to return a representative to Parliament, will enter upon a renewed career of bustling life and activity, and take its place with the bright new towns which have sprung up around it.

July 18, 1885.

LENTEN ABSTINENCE AT CARISBROOKE, A. D. 1620.

An entry on a leaf in the Carisbrooke Registers, recording that a licence has been granted to Eleanor Chapple to eat flesh in Lent, signed by John Baker, Vicar of Carisbrooke, in 1620, brings to light a vestige of the past now long since dead and buried and wellnigh forgotten.

So grave and philosophic a writer as Mr. Hallam has considered that the regulations enacted at various times since the Reformation for the observance of abstinence deserve some notice. I would refer such of your readers as may feel special interest in this subject to the elaborate and valuable note in Hallam's Constitutional History (vol. i. pp. 397399).

It will be sufficient here to state that by the Statute of 1548 (2 & 3 Edward VI, c. 19) abstinence from flesh during Lent was ordained, not as a religious matter, but as healthful, and also to employ fishermen.

The next statute relating to abstinence is one in 1563, (5th Eliz., c. 5) and is entirely for the increase of the fishery. It enacts that no one, unless having a licence, shall eat flesh on fish days, or on Wednesdays, now made an additional fish day. In 1585 the Act 27th Eliz., c. II, repeals the prohibition as to Wednesday, and provides that no victuallers shall vend flesh in Lent under a penalty.

The 35th of Eliz., c. 7 (A. D. 1593) reduces the penalty enacted by 5th of Eliz. to one third. This is the latest statute that appears on the subject. Royal proclamations were in addition issued in order to enforce an observance so distasteful to the appetites of Englishmen. This abstemious system was however only compulsory on those who could not afford to pay for licences, which were easily obtained from the Privy Council in Edward's days, and afterwards from the bishop. It must be presumed that in the case of the licence for Eleanor Chapple, the vicar of Carisbrooke acted as surrogate for the bishop. The civil wars did not so put an end to the compulsory observance of Lent and of fish days but that similar proclamations are found after the Restoration.

The language of the statute proves that this compulsory abstinence was not a survival of the ecclesiastical observance of fasting but, to use the language of Hooker (Eccl. Pol. Bk. v. s. 72), 'for the maintenance of sea-faring men and the preservation of cattle, because the decay of the one and the wasting of the other could not well be prevented but by a politic order appointing some such usual change of diet as ours is.' If indeed this privation of flesh diet had been an ecclesiastical ordinance, the Puritans, who despised the season of Lent, would have made it one of their grievances at the Hampton Court Conference (A. D. 1604), but no remonstrance on this subject was made by them. This licensing system might have been well objected to by both of the two leading parties in the English Church who discussed their differences at the Conference, for it has a certain family likeness to the sale of indulgences by the ecclesiastical authorities. A licence, for instance, empowered the purchaser of it to eat meat with his guests on all fasting days for life. Elizabeth's first statute for the encouragement of fishery provides that £1 6s. 8d. shall be paid for granting every licence, and 6s. 8d. annually afterwards to the poor of the parish. But no licence was to be granted for eating beef at any time of the year, or veal from Michaelmas to May 1. 'A melancholy privation,' such is Hallam's comment, 'to our countrymen, but I have no doubt little regarded.'

This subject of compulsory abstinence has its moral for

our days, upon which nothing need be said here, for whatever legislative interference may be expected in the future with the private habits of the people, it is not likely that any restrictions will be placed on their flesh diet.

February 21, 1885.

A STAGE PLAY AT NEWPORT, I. W.,

A. D. 1624.

IN Mr. Hillier's unfinished History of Newport is found the following extract from the records of the Corporation of that ancient borough, of the date April 16, 1624. At this assemblie, Mr. Maior and the companie being at the hall about assessing for the poore and other urgent business, there came in Gilbert Reason, a player, and shewing his authoritie, desiered to have leave to playe in the towne, whereupon Mr. Maior and the companie considering the povertie of the towne, and the inconvenience of suffering players to plaie too long in the towne heertofore, to lymitt him the said Gilbert and his companie to plaie only in the evening and to morrowe, and no longer, or two other daies, in the old towne hall, and the said Gilbert not being therewith all contented, much urged to have longer time and would not depart, being three or foure times so required, but at length saied he would stand on his authoritie, and told Mr. Maior that he would be questioned for yt, and that he should heare from my Lord Chamberlain, with divers and other empty speeches.'

This entry from the documents in the possession of the Corporation of Newport is illustrated by a very precise and interesting account of the way in which theatrical performances took place in very early times by a man who was born in the same year as William Shakespeare, A. D. 1564. In 1639, so writes the late Mr. Charles Knight (Studies of Shakespeare, London, 1849, p. 9), R. W. (R. Willis), stating his age to be seventy-five, published a little volume called

Mount Tabor, which contains a passage which is essential to any history or sketch of the early stage. Upon a stageplay which I saw when I was a child.' 'In the city of Gloucester the manner is (as I think it is in other corporations) that when players of interludes come to town. they first attend the Mayor to inform him what nobleman's servants they are, and so to get license for their public playing, and if the Mayor like the actors, or would pay respect to their lord and master, he appoints them to play before himself and the aldermen and common council of the city; and that is called the Mayor's play, where everyone that wills comes in without money, the Mayor giving the players a reward as he thinks fit to show respect unto them. At such a play my father took me with him, and made me stand between his legs as he sat upon one of the benches, where we sat and heard very well.'

From this account of Willis we can understand what took place at Newport in 1624. In that year the life of James I was drawing to a close, since his son Charles I succeeded to the throne in the following year. In the first year of James the First the bailiff and burgesses of Newport were constituted a body politic to consist of a Mayor, twentyfour burgesses, and a recorder, with power to choose a townclerk; the Mayor to be sworn into his office before the Captain of the Island or his steward. On this occasion the Mayor paid the players for their first performance out of the Corporation funds. This first performance was the chief magistrate's play, and to its representation no doubt some of the corporators took their sons, like young Willis, and placed them between their knees as they sat on the benches. To this or the other performances would come some of those gentlemen of the Island, who, as Sir John Oglander relates, used to meet at the bowling-green at Standen. Lord Southampton, the popular Governor of the Island, had been a patron of Shakespeare and of the theatre generally in London, but at this time he had gone out in command of troops to that expedition to the Netherlands, where at Bergen-op-Zoom he died. The performance took place at the Old Towne-hall,' and was therefore not the plain gabled building, interesting as the place of conference