The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

62 Beckmann makes many other observations on this well-known circumstance. The priest named is the same who is still known in the nursery tales of children as the Knecht Ruprecht.

63 Dass dir Sanct Veitstanz ankomme ("May you be seized with St. Vitus' dance").

64 "This proceeding was, however, no invention of his, but an imitation of a usual mode of enchantment by means of wax figures (peri cunculas). The witches made a wax image of the person who was to be bewitched; and in order to torment him, they stuck it full of pins, or melted it before the fire. The books on magic, of the Middle Ages, are full of such things; though the reader who may wish to obtain information on this subject need not go so far back. Only eighty years since, the learned and celebrated Storch, of the school of Stahl, published a treatise on witchcraft, worthy of the fourteenth century."—Treatise on the Diseases of Children.

65 Some authorities give twenty-nine.

66 Selden, in his Table Talk, says: "There was once, I am sure, a parliamentary pope. Pope Urban was made pope in England by act of parliament, against Pope Clement: the act is not in the Book of Statutes, either because he that compiled the book would not have the name of the Pope there, or else he would not let it appear that they meddled with any such thing; but it is upon the rolls."

67 A groat equalled fourpence, or eight cents.

68 In Walsingham may be seen a long account of the death of the Archbishop, page 250. His head was carried in triumph through the streets on the point of a lance, and fixed on London bridge. That it might be the better known, the hat or bonnet worn by him was nailed to the skull.

69 When Tresilian, one of the judges, tried the insurgents at St. Alban's, he impanelled three juries of twelve men each. The first was ordered to present all whom they knew to be the chiefs of the tumult, the second gave their opinion on the presentation of the first, and the third pronounced the verdict of guilty or not guilty. It does not appear that witnesses were examined. The juries spoke from their personal knowledge. Thus each convict was condemned on the oaths of thirty-six men. At first, on account of the multitude of executions, the condemned were beheaded: afterward they were hanged and left on the gibbet as objects of terror; but as their bodies were removed by their friends, the King ordered them to be hanged in chains, the first instance in which express mention of the practice is made. According to Holinshed the executions amounted to fifteen hundred.

70 The readers, as might be expected, often surreptitiously copied portions of special interest. One is reminded of the story in ancient Irish history of a curious decision arising out of an incident of this kind nearly a thousand years before, which seems to have influenced the history of Christianity in Britain. St. Columb, on a visit to the aged St. Finian in Ulster, had permission to read in the Psalter belonging to his host. But every night while the good old saint was sleeping, the young one was busy in the chapel writing by a miraculous light till he had completed a copy of the whole Psalter. The owner of the Psalter, discovering this, demanded that it should be given up, as it had been copied unlawfully from his book; while the copyist insisted that, the materials of labor being his, he was entitled to what he had written. The dispute was referred to Diarmad, the King at Tara, and his decision (genuinely Irish) was given in St. Finian's favor. "To every book," said he, "belongs its son-book [copy], as to every cow belongs her calf." Columb complained of the decision as unjust, and the dispute is said to have been one of the causes of his leaving Ireland for Iona.

71 Oliver Wendell Holmes: Autocrat of the Breakfast-table.

72 A town in Schwyz. The name means a "hermitage." St. Meinrad, according to legend, lived there (ninth century) as a hermit. It is a celebrated pilgrim resort.—Ed.

73 He descended from Henry III both by father and mother. But he could not claim by the father's side, because the young Earl of March was sprung from the Duke of Clarence, the elder brother of John of Gaunt; nor by the mother's side, because she was sprung from Edmund of Lancaster, a younger brother of Edward I. It was pretended that Edmund was the elder brother, but deformed in body, and therefore set aside with his own consent. If we may believe Hardyng, Henry on September 21st produced in council a document to prove the seniority of Edmund over Edward, but that the contrary was shown by a number of unanswerable authorities.