[241] Crowns exactly similar to this, made of box, tinsel, and coloured paper, are yearly hung out by the fishmongers in Holland on the first arrival of the salt herring after the summer fishery.
[242] Pennant’s Account of London, p. 423.
[243] _Gentleman’s Magazine_, March 1842; and _London Gazette_, Dec. 30, 1718.
[244] Lloyd’s _Evening Post_, Jan. 16-19, 1761.
[246] Robert Herrick, Hesperides, p. 234.
[247] Aubrey, Anecdotes and Traditions, p. 3.
[251] Hence we have 7 ages, 7 churches, 7 champions, 7 penitential psalms, 7 sleepers of Ephesus, 7 years’ apprenticeship, 7 cardinal virtues and deadly sins, 7 make a gallows-ful, boots of 7 leagues, 7 liberal arts, and innumerable other instances.
[252] Collier’s Annals, vol. iii. p. 271, and Halliwell’s Introduction to Tarlton’s Jests, p. 16.
[254] “He went about almost naked in the rage of hunger,” says Dr Johnson, “and finding a gentleman in a neighbouring coffeehouse asked him for a shilling; and Otway going away bought a roll and was choked with the first mouthful.”
[256] The History of the Plague, by Defoe.
[257] There is still a BULL’S HEAD public-house in this street, built on the site of the house of Thomas Britton, the Musical Small-Coal Man, where he gave his celebrated concerts for a period of 36 years, powdered duchesses and fastidious ladies of the Court tripping through his coal repository, and climbing up a ladder to assist at these famous meetings.
[259] This riding in a cart was a very ancient punishment, probably introduced by the Normans; in the romance of Lancelot du Lac the cart is mentioned with the following remarks:--“At that time a cart was considered so vile that nobody ever went into it, but those who had lost all honour and good name; and when a person was to be degraded, he was made to ride in a cart, for a cart served at that time for the same purpose as the pillory now-a-days, and each town had only one of them.” In the old English laws it was called the _Tumbrill_; thus Edward I. in 1240 enacted a law by which millers stealing corn were to be chastised by the Tumbrill.--See _Fabian’s Chronicles_, 2 Edw. I.
[260] For the chequered life of this strange individual, see Caulfield’s Memoirs of Remarkable Persons, vol. ii. From the _Original Weekly Journal_, Sept. 13, 1718, we gather the information that, “Last week _Dr_ Campbell, the famous dumb fortune-teller, was married to a gentlewoman of considerable fortune in Shadwell.”