The Fortunes of Nigel

to make prey of the accursed race, whom the fiend made his habitation. Ben Jonson, in drawing James's character, says, he loved 'no part of a swine.'

21

These memorials of illustrious criminals, or of innocent persons who had the fate of such, are still preserved, though at one time, in the course of repairing the rooms, they were in some danger of being whitewashed. They are preserved at present with becoming respect, and have most of them been engraved.— See BAYLEY'S History and Antiquities of the Tower of London.

22

The celebrated Court jester.

23

Wilson informs us that when Colonel Grey, a Scotsman who affected the buff dress even in the time of peace, appeared in that military garb at Court, the king, seeing him with a case of pistols at his girdle, which he never greatly liked, told him, merrily, 'he was now so fortified, that, if he were but well victualled, he would be impregnable.'—WILSON'S Life and Reign of James VI., apud KENNET'S History of England, vol. ii. p. 389. In 1612, the tenth year of James's reign, there was a rumour abroad that a shipload of pocket-pistols had been exported from Spain, with a view to a general massacre of the Protestants. Proclamations were of consequence sent forth, prohibiting all persons from carrying pistols under a foot long in the barrel. Ibid. p. 690.

24

A leglin-girth is the lowest hoop upon a leglin, or milk- pail. Allan Ramsay applies the phrase in the same metaphorical sense.

'Or bairns can read, they first maun spell, 
 I learn'd this frae my mammy, 
 And cast a leglin-girth mysell, 
 Lang ere I married Tammy.'

                              Christ's Kirk On The Green.

25

The old-fashioned weapon called the Jeddart staff was a species of battle-axe. Of a very great tempest, it is said, in the south of Scotland, that it rains Jeddart staffs, as in England the common people talk of its raining cats and dogs.

26

Clarendon remarks, that the importance of the military exercise of the citizens was severely felt by the cavaliers during the civil war, notwithstanding the ridicule that had been showered upon it by the dramatic poets of the day. Nothing less than habitual practice could, at the battle of Newbury and elsewhere, have enabled the Londoners to keep their ranks as pikemen, in spite of the repeated charge of the fiery Prince Rupert and his gallant cavaliers.

27

A particular species of rack, used at the Tower of London, was so called.

28

This elegant speech was made by the Earl of Douglas, called Tineman after being wounded and made prisoner at the battle of Shrewsbury, where

'His well labouring sword
 Had three times slain the semblance of the king,'

29

Chaucer says, there is nothing new but what it has been old. The reader has here the original of an anecdote which has since been fathered on a Scottish Chief of our own time.

30

The penny- wedding of the Scots, now disused even among the lowest ranks, was a peculiar species of merry-making, at which, if the wedded pair were popular, the guests who convened, contributed considerable