drowned, but survived her immersion for only five months. A
singular homicide is recorded at Newington Butts, 1689. "John Arris
and Derwick Farlin in one grave, being both Dutch soldiers; one
killed the other drinking brandy." But who slew the slayer? The
register is silent; but "often eating a shoulder of mutton or a peck
of hasty pudding at a time caused the death of James Parsons," at
Teddington, in Middlesex, 1743. Parsons had resisted the effects of
shoulders of mutton and hasty pudding till the age of thirty-six.

And so the registers run on. Sometimes they tell of the death of a
glutton, sometimes of a GRACE WYFE (grosse femme). Now the bell
tolls for the decease of a duke, now of a "dog-whipper."
"Lutenists" and "Saltpetremen"--the skeleton of the old German
allegory whispers to each and twitches him by the sleeve. "Ellis
Thompson, insipiens," leaves Chester-le-Street, where he had gabbled
and scrabbled on the doors, and follows "William, foole to my Lady
Jerningham," and "Edward Errington, the Towne's Fooll" (Newcastle-
on-Tyne) down the way to dusty death. Edward Errington died "of the
pest," and another idiot took his place and office, for Newcastle
had her regular town fools before she acquired her singularly
advanced modern representatives. The "aquavity man" dies (in
Cripplegate), and the "dumb-man who was a fortune-teller" (Stepney,
1628), and the "King's Falkner," and Mr. Gregory Isham, who combined
the professions, not frequently united, of "attorney and
husbandman," in Barwell, Leicestershire (1655). "The lame chimney-
sweeper," and the "King of the gypsies," and Alexander Willis, "qui
calographiam docuit," the linguist, and the Tom o' Bedlam, the
comfit-maker, and the panyer-man, and the tack-maker, and the
suicide, they all found death; or, if they sought him, the
churchyard where they were "hurled into a grave" was interdicted,