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Meteorological Diaries for May and June, 1795.
METEOROLOGICAL TABLE for June, 1795.

Height of Fahrenheit's Thermometer.

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NE gentle
8NE gentle

29 NW gentle
30 SW calm
315W calm

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1. Saw a fwallow for the first time.-3. Frafty.-5. Swallows hawking in company. The country very bufy in many places planting their winter crops of potatoes. A thick mift comes on at twelve, and continues about an hour; dering which a fevere chilliness in the air. After the mist difappeared, the fun broke out. Mifts feveral evenings afterwards. 1. A fevere gale from the N.W. has ftripped the trees of leaves, and blafted the fide on which it fell.-15. Measured the rhubarb plant (rheum palmetum), which broke ground April 1, which is this day fifty-two inches in length, and in bloom.-16. Potatoe-ftems

turned

THE

Gentleman's Magazine:

For JUNE, 1795.

BEING THE SIXTH NUMBER OF VOL. LXV. PART I.

Mr. URBAN,

Р

June 21. ERMIT me to inform your too peremptory correfpondent, Mr. C. Plowden, that Dodd's MS papers, among *** which are the Memoirs of Panzani, are in the library at Olcott, which, as far as I can empower him to enter another man's houfe, he may vifit when, and in what form, he pleases; or, as more converfant, perhaps, with antiquarian research, he may employ his fellow-labourer, the

diplomatic John Milner, whole fame is

now high as the fagacious detector of fpurious writings and of needle-holes. Dodd's MSS. in his own hand-writing, which form three large volumes in folio, of which the Memoirs occupy 45 pages very closely written, were left by him to Mr. Brockholes (no relation, I prefume, of the above Dr. Needleholes), of Chillington, from whom they came into the hands of the late Mr. Clough, and from the last gentleman to me. Their defcent is thus accurately ftated. What remains to be done, in regard to the authenticity of the MS. itself, or my faithfalnefs in copying the Memoirs, must be the labour of your correfpondent or his friend. Only I may add, that, agreeably to the doctrine thefe gentle men bave lately laid down, I can have little doubt, should it appear that I have altered any words or even a fingle point, they will eafily demonftrate that the

Memoirs of Panzani are the offspring of a juggle. For, Mr. Urban, it is by a fimilar tricking device they now undertake to prove, that the Proteftation of the Roman Catholics, lately depofited in the British Mufeum, is not an authentic inftrument, and that we are, therefore, released from the folemn engagement entered into with the country. Would an oath, think you, bind fuch cafuifts, fhould it ever be their humour to break it ? J. BERINGTON.

Mr. URBAN,

June 12.

ONE R. J. has taken the pains of tranflating, p. 372, a copious extract from Matthew Paris, to remind your readers, that, about 600 years fince, the Jews crucified a boy at Lincoln."

This crime, we know, was a frequent accufation against them; but, of the numerous charges which have been made, not one has ever been fubftantiated. Legends, like the prefent one of Matthew Paris, are never brought forward by a philofophical writer but with a view to refute, not to tranflate.

Matthew Paris has indeed given a circumftantial narrative of this crucifixion, and he has likewife of many vifions and apparitions. It is confeffed this writer difplays many picturesque beauties in his tales. A child fattened on white bread and milk for ten days in a fecluded apartment, all the Jews in England invited to the crucifixion; the earth rejecting the body of the infant martyr,

turned black with last night's froft. In fome places the froft has been fo fevere as to have affected the grafs. Meafured the rhubarb-plant again, and which has grown from one o'clock yesterday to the fame hour this day (19) 4 inches 6-10ths. 20. Narciffus in bloom. 21. Hawthorn in bloom.-22. The rhubarb-plant has grown 4 inches 9-1oths in 24 hours.-23. A heavy fog in the evening after a detightful day.-24. Some young-planted thorns injured and withered by the air from the Eaft.-25. Thick mift in the evening.26. Horfe-chefnut, libernum, mountain-ash, in bloom.-29. Gathered first gooseberries, Great show of moft kinds of bloom; the fruit of the fummer Portugal pear already fet; forest-trees, plantations, and hedge-rows, in high perfection and full cloathing. Grubs in left fruit-trees. The leaves of fome goofeberries and currants devoured.

Fall of rain this month, 1 inchi. Evaporation, 4 inches and an half. Walton, near Liverpool.

J. HOLT.

452 The Jews vindicated against their Ca'umniators.

martyr, and the mother difcovering it in a well; are circumstances which could not fail to intereft in the bigoted and fabling age of Matthew. I only obferve, that ten days is a pace of time too fhort to fatten a child and to affemble alt the Jews in England. Men neither fatten nor fly as fast as birds.

Yet, Mr. Urban, this is the only le gend which is fupported by any autbority.

I will not conceal from R. J. what R. J. may, perhaps, be very ignorant of. Tovey, a bumane antiquary, after confefling that the fact by fome has been denied, and by fome not credited, is compelled to acknowledge, that two records, which his industry has difcovered, render the matter no longer difputable for the one is the king's commiffion for trial of the fact, and the other a warrant to fell the goods of the guilty Jews.

Tovey, having hitherto exculpated the Jews, appears at this place to have funk under the conviction of its verity. I have confulted thefe records, and do not hefitate to declare, that, as no evidence appears there or elsewhere, it comports not with the candour of the hiftorian to perpetuate an odium of fo hateful a nature. It was very ufual in the reign of Henty II to find rich Jews guilty; an accufation was a crime. I acknowledge that thefe Jews were tried, and pronounced guilty; but I cannot believe their guilt. Attend to the fact, with all its circumftances. Every particular line must be a lie; and would the tranfcriber believe that the whole is truth? Can his malicious ingenuity prove, that a number of lies amount to one truth?

Believe me, venerable Urban, that the Jews were never accused of crucifying children till the king wanted money. The Jews never ufed any wood for the purpose of crucifying Chriflians; but I am certain, that the Chriftians have employed a great deal for burning them.

The calumnies which have been fpread concerning the defcendants of Jacob have been numerous; but they have all been, like the prefent one, accompanied with circumitances, which in this age deftroy their poflibility. I thali confume little time in mentioning a few I recollect. Because a king of France happened to be more infane than fome of his predeceffors, all Jews were • ex veled from their native country; for the royal lunatic was declared by an

[June,

archbishop to be fo, in confequence of Jewish witchcraft. Because a vagrant,

not lefs infane than this French monarch, propofed exterminating the Turks, the Crufaders, to begin aufpiciously, first fleshed their fwords among the European Jews; and because these Quixo• tic expeditions were, as they naturally fhould be, more deftructive to the Chriftians than the Turks, half the remaining Jews were maffacred on their return. Was there a plague? the waters were pofoned by the Jews. Was there a famine? the harvefts were, bewitched by the fynagogue. They burnt, they maffacred, they tortured, till at length the plague ceafed, and the famine was no more; and the confequence was, that murdering the Jews was therefore confidered as a defirable national expiation. Was a king crowned? the royal ceremony was attended with the splendid deftruction of his unhappy fubjects, the Jews.

Sir, do not think I am reviving old tales. Even in this age, bigotry, cruel remorfelefs Superftition, is not yet extin&t; the ftill has eyes to read, and arms to crush. I give you two instances, and I conclude. I think in Bruffels there is a picture which represents some Jews who had pierced the hoft, from which immediately iffued an effufion of blood. You know not what evil the infpection of this picture occafions. Children view it in their infancy, and their hearts are nurtured with venom against men, whose touch the very hoft rejects, and leaves, as an external teftimony of the divine vengeance, the precious blood of the Saviour. I am writing to a proteftant, and he Perceives the imbecillity of the tranfaction. But, fo late as in the year 1740, the Jews having received diftinguished privileges from the king of the Two Sicilies, a prophet of fome monaftic order having predicted that his majesty would have no male heirs unless he expelled the Jews, they were therefore immediately cancelled from the rolls of citizens, and once more expelled, the outcasts of their native city. They are fometimes indeed admitted by courtefy; but their refidence is illegal, and they lie at the difcretion of fome new prophet.

It is much worfe with them at present in the Pope's dominions, where they are compelled to wear a yellow mark on their hats. The Jews are a difpirited and degenerated race; their minds and bodies are equally diminutive; they are

Helotes

Melores among the Spartans, and they appear willing to be fo; but, furely, if oppreffion is never to give repose to her reftiefs arm, if men are always to be faves, without the hope of emancipa tion, I will venture to predict, that the fuffering fons of Jacob will in their turn be calumniated by the odious denomination of Jacobins.

Wherever one class of people is pushed afide with outrage and contempt, the diftinctions become too odious, too painful, in an enlightened age. The mother country will be regarded, by her children of affliction, with a natural antipathy they will lift their difinherited hand against her as towards a cruel ftep-mother.

It is a great misfortune, that the Jew. ifh nation cannot produce one writer to vindicate, with elegance and with truth, their forlorn, their indignant ftate. The Jews have only found advocates in enlightened Chriflians; but it is more frequently their misfortune alfo to receive, in filence and refignation, the infults of Chriftians like your corre fpondent R. J.

Mr. URBAN,

J. D. I.

June 25.

AMONG the records in the Lord

Treasurer's Remembrancer-office, in the Exchequer, just published by Mr. Jones, is this article:

"MONETA. De Henrico Burton de Si dynborne occafionato ad respondendum regi de 150l. monetæ nigræ fubterranea in comitatu Kancia. (Michaelis Recorda 20 H. IV.) The black money was a base coin brought in by foreigners, and feverely prohibited by Edward III. (See Martin Leake, p. 89), but coined by the fame king, and his fucceffors, Richard II. and Henry IV. V. and VI. at Bourdeaux and Bayonne in Aquitaine (Ib. p. 159). Your numifmatic readers (if there are any left) will tell us whether fubterranea was a quantity of this money found in any of the king's manors in Kent, and claimed as trefor trave. D. H.

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tion was immediately turned to that village.

I find a memorandum of a portion of the church-lands amongst my papers, of which no notice appears in Mr. Lyfons. Henry the Eighth, by letters patent, 27th January, in the 35th year of his reign, granted to John Cokk, his heirs and affiens, in fee-farm, all that mead called Hiftynge's mead, containing by estimation fixteen acres, with the appurtenances, lying and being in Hackney, in the county of Middlefex, to the hospital of St. John of Jerufalem, thentofore belonging and appertaining under the yearly fee-farm rent of five fhillings and four-pence, payable at Michaelmas only.

This crown quit-rent, together with a larger quit-rent, I prefume that mentioned by Mr. Lyfons for the king's hold, formerly paid to the Bishop of London (p. 454), and which, when the manor became vetted in the crown, temp. James I. reverted to it, were fold by act of parliament 1673, the trustees being Francis Lord Hawley, Sir Charles Harbord, Sir William Hayward, Sir John Talbott, Sir Robert Stewart, knt. and William Harbord, efq. who were

accordingly parties to the conveyance.

Haftings's mead, otherwife Jerufalemclofe, appears to have been in the polfelhon of Henry Offley before 1666. 1685, John Crew Offley furrendered one moiety of houfe and lands in Wellftreet to Edward Birch, in fee, and the other to John Offley, in tail. 1735, Ann Offley, afterwards the wife of Edwin Sandys, admitted in fee. Special court, 17 June, 1758, Sufanna Dawson, an infant, admitted on the furrender of Edwin Sandys, who became entitled, as furvivor of his wife, under a preceding furrender. This property was in Wellstreet. What connexion the family had with Haftings's mead does not appear from these memoranda.

In the year 1789, Haftings's mead and St. John's mead, in Hackney parifb, and Bishop's Egney and South Egney, parcel of the demefnes of Stebon heath, alias Stepney, being precifely the names of the lands held by Henry Offley, were advertifed for public fale, and appeared to be close to the river Lea; which lands, it is prefumed, are thofe originally granted by Hen y the Eighth to John Cokk

P. 502. Robert Fleming does not ap. pear ever to have been minister of the congregation of Fiefbyterians at Salvers

hall,

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