Charlotte

to Dee at Louvain. He was one of the earliest apologists for these unfortunate folk, and pleaded that, their brains being disordered by melancholy, they merited pity, not punishment. His book contains the first account of “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” from the archives of the town of Hamelin. A Spanish grammar was lent to Mr. Barlow for his son. Mr. Matthew Heton was the borrower of theological works, including the Concordantiae Bibliorum (1555) of Robert Stephens, the illustrious printer of the New Testamentl; and a Calvinistic treatise, De Coena Domini, written

by Dr. Pezel, who had, we remember, commemorated Dee’s departure from Bremen in 1589 by verses. Dee lent Heton books,but Heton lent Dee ten pounds on a bill of hand. To John Cholmeley “I lent my Latyn boke in 8vo, De Morbis Infantum.”

The disputes over tithes and lands belonging to the college naturally affected the Warden’s income, and Dee found himself compelled to borrow small sums as before. Finally he was reduced to raise money on his plate, and especially on the handsome double gilt tankard, with a cover, which was the christening gift of the Countess of Hertford to her god-daughter Frances. It weighed 22 ounces, and Dee tells how he delivered it to Charles Leigh, one of the college “singing men,” to lay in pawn in his own name with Robert Welsham, the goldsmith, “till within two days after May-day next. My daughter Katherine and John Crocker [the old servant], and I myself [John Dee], were at the delivery of it and waying of it, in my dyning chamber.

It was wrapped in a new handkercher cloth.” All that was obtained on the tankard was 4 pounds of the current value.

In the spring of 1597, Dee records, on May 4, the last of the Rogation days of the year, a very interesting topographical event, viz., the perambulation of the bounds of old Manchester by himself, the curate, and the clerk.

Away in the south-eastern corner of England, in the little village of Bourne, near Canterbury, about this very time, Richard Hooker, the saintly scholar, was performing a similar perambulation, of which Izaak Walton has left us the immortal picture. A homily was prepared for the service, a psalm sung, and the malediction pronounced, “Cursed be he that removes his neighbour’s landmark.”

Izaak Walton tells us that Hooker, to look at, was an “Obscure harmless man in poor clothes, his loins girt in a coarse gown or canonical coat; of a mean stature and stooping, yet more lowly in the thoughts of his soul; his body worn out, not with age, but study and holy mortification. Yet he would by no means omit the customary procession; persuading all, both rich and poor: if they desired the preservation of loe and their parish rights and liberties, to accompany him in his perambulation; and most did so. In which perambulation, he would express more pleasant discourse than at other times, and would then always drop some loving and facetious observations, to be remembered against the next year, especially by the boys and young people; still inclining them, and all his present parishioners, to meekness and mutual kindnesses and love, because love thinks no evil, but covers a multitude of sins.”

The Warden of Manchester has not left us such an impression of the ancient antiquarian custom performed as a holy rite of devotion, but as an exact topographer and mathematician he has givena highly valuable record: — 1597. “May 4. I with Sir Robert Barber, curate, and Robert Tilsley, clerk of Manchester parish church, with diverse of the town of diverse ages, went in