they emanated attracted his attention: he lived at very peculiar time: during his adolescence, the Reformation had been effected; the face, therefore, of ecclesiastical objects, and their appendages, had been continually changing, nor were those changes unmarked by him. His library, therefore, even when it attracted the attention of Bishop Grindall, must have been large; yet it was not until, as he termed it, he was settled for life, that he began the great work of arrangement. In this pursuit, his historical researches took a more regular turn: eager in the chase, he threw the reins of his genius upon the neck of his ruling passion, which might have been well typified by the ideal image of an impetuous courser: while immersed in study, surrounded with his books, he neglected his domestic affairs, and, forgetting that excellent civic adage,

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keep your shop, and your shop will keep you," suffered his business, as the vulgar phrase is, to stand" at sixes and sevens."

Having spent his patrimony, and the best part of his estate in pursuing his favourite studies and labours, he was forced, in the latter part of his life, to have a subscription made for his relief. And, for that purpose, King James I. granted him a license or brief, dated the 8th of May, 1603, which was renewed the 26th of November, 1604, authorizing him or his deputy, to repair to churches or other places, to receive the gratuities and charitable benevolence of well-disposed people; but if we

may judge from the collection made in one parish, (St. Mary Woolnoth,) which amounted to 7s. 6d. there appears to have been very little contributed towards his relief. Besides, he hardly lived long enough to see the collection completed. "It is strange," as Strype justly observes, "that the city of London, to which he had done such service and honour, in writing such an elaborate and accurate survey thereof; nor the wealthy companý of Merchant-Tailors, of which he was a worthy and creditable member; nor, lastly, the state, in grateful remembrance of his diligent and faithful pains, in composing an excellent history of the kingdom; none of them had allotted him some honorary pension for life."

In addition to the poverty of Stow, he was much afflicted with pains in his feet, probably the gout, and also with the stone. Under all these adverse circumstances, and having attained the 80th year of his age, he departed this life, April 5, 1605, and was buried two days afterwards in his parishchurch of St. Andrew Undershaft, where his widow erected a decent monument to his memory.

By Mr. Edmund Howes, who was perfectly acquainted with Stow, his person and character are described in the following words :-" He was tall of stature, leane of body and face, his eyes small and chrystaline, of a pleasant and cheerfull countenance, his sight very good, his memory excellent; very sober, mild, and courteous to any that

required his instruction; and retained the true use of all his senses until the day of his death. He always protested never to have written any thing either for malice, feare, or favour, nor to seek his own particular gaine, or vain glory, and that his only pains and care was to write truth." As a great lover of truth, so was he always inquisitive to find it out: and his good judgment, learning, and skill in history and antiquities, qualified and enabled him not to be put off with frauds and superstitious fables, commonly believed and related by men of less accuracy; as is plain from many instances in his writings.

"On all occasions Mr. Stow professed a great dislike for immorality of every kind, injustice, wrongs, frauds, unfaithfulness, falsehood, and treachery; which shewed an honest and good mind: and he spared not to expose the more scandalous sorts of men that fell in his way; as lewd and unclean priests, unfaithful executors, abusers of charitable donations, false jurymen, counterfeit physicians, and other cheats and impostors, extortioners and cruel oppressors, violators of the monuments of the dead, and exalters of themselves above their neighbours*.'

With regard to his religion, Stow undoubtedly was at first a favourer as well as a professor of popery but his words, under the reign of Queen Elizabeth," that doctrine is more pure now, than * Biograph. Britannica.

it was in the monkish world," imply that he had then altered his mind. Being a lover of antiquity, and admirer of the old religious buildings and monuments, he was perhaps prejudiced against the reformed religion, because of the terrible havoc and destruction those that pretended to it, made of them in his days; a circumstance, indeed, that might render him less affected to the religion in his time reformed, when he noticed how ignorantly, nay ridiculously, some that professed and preached it, shewed their zeal*. Upon the whole,

* Of this he gives us some instances in Sir Stephen, curate of St. Catherine Cree church parish, where Mr. Stow then lived. That curate, in a sermon at St. Paul's, inveighed severely against a long maypole, called a shaft, in the next parish to his, named thence St. Andrew Undershaft, calling it an idol; which so inflamed the zeal of many of the hearers, because all idols were ordered by public authority to be taken away, that a great number of the neighbours went the same afternoon, and violently pulled it down from the place where it hung upon hooks, and then sawed it into several pieces, of which each housekeeper taking a piece, as much as hung over his door and stall, and afterwards casting the pieces into one common heap, burnt them. Mr. Stow heard this sermon, and witnessed the effect of it. The same preacher, taking occasion from that church's name, Undershaft, as superstitiously given to it, declared it as his judgment, that the names of churches should be altered; nay, that the names of the days in the week might be changed, the fast-days to be kept on any days except Fridays and Saturdays: and farther, that Lent should be observed at any other time than between Shrovetide and Easter. Another practice of this Sir Stephen was, oftentimes to forsake the pulpit, and getting up into a high elm that grew in the middle of the churchyard, to preach from thence to the people; and returning into the church, he would say or sing the English service, not at the altar, as was usual, but upon a tomb at

he appears throughout to have been an honest and well-meaning man; and his Chronicle, or Annals, as far as they go, are still the best and most exact

extant.

CURIOUS PARTICULARS OF THE CUSTOMS AND MANNERS OF THE ANCIENT ENGLISH.

Marriages among the Anglo-Saxons.

THE customs of the Anglo-Saxons (and indeed of all the northern nations,) have somewhat particularly worthy of notice in them, as far as relate to matrimony.

An unmarried woman was always supposed to have a mund-bora or guardian, or owner: the virgin belonged to her father, brother, uncle, or nearest male relation; the widow claimed the same protection of her dead husband's male relations: the lover was obliged to buy his mistress of her mund-bora by a mede, or gift, the amount of which was settled by a law, that set a higher price on the maid by one half, than on the relict. If the wooer unadvisedly married the lady without the mundbora's consent, her person and goods were still the property of her guardian; and an injury offered to her was to be atoned for, not to the spouse, but to the mund-bora. At the wedding*, the mund-bora the north side of the church. Such were the irregular practices of the methodists or zealots of those times, which served only to expose the Reformation.

* The nuptial benediction was frequently given to the bride while