another
the "Battle flats." From a tradition that the weapon with which the
Norwegian champion was slain, resembled a pear, or, as others say, that
the trough or boat in which the soldier floated under the bridge to
strike the blow, had such a shape, the country people usually begin a
great market, which is held at Stamford, with an entertainment called
the Pear-pie feast, which after all may be a corruption of the Spear-pie
feast. For more particulars, Drake's History of York may be referred
to. The author's mistake was pointed out to him, in the most obliging
manner, by Robert Belt, Esq. of Bossal House. The battle was fought in
1066.

NOTE TO CHAPTER XXII.

Note E.--The range of iron bars above that glowing charcoal.

This horrid species of torture may remind the reader of that to which
the Spaniards subjected Guatimozin, in order to extort a discovery of
his concealed wealth. But, in fact, an instance of similar barbarity is
to be found nearer home, and occurs in the annals of Queen Mary's
time, containing so many other examples of atrocity. Every reader
must recollect, that after the fall of the Catholic Church, and the
Presbyterian Church Government had been established by law, the rank,
and especially the wealth, of the Bishops, Abbots, Priors, and so forth,
were no longer vested in ecclesiastics, but in lay impropriators of the
church revenues, or, as the Scottish lawyers called them, titulars
of the temporalities of the benefice, though having no claim to the
spiritual character of their predecessors in office.

Of these laymen, who were thus invested with ecclesiastical revenues,
some were men of high birth and rank, like the famous Lord James
Stewart, the Prior of St Andrews, who did not fail to keep for their own
use the rents, lands, and revenues of the church. But if, on the
other hand, the titulars were men of inferior importance, who had been
inducted into the office by the interest of some powerful person, it was
generally understood that the new Abbot should grant for his patron's
benefit such leases and conveyances of the church lands and tithes as
might afford their protector the lion's share of the booty. This was the
origin of those who were wittily termed Tulchan [61]

Bishops, being a sort of imaginary prelate, whose image was set up to
enable his patron and principal to plunder the benefice under his name.

There were other cases, however, in which men who had got grants of
these s