ase;
For a _Waistcoat_ or _Bridle_, there's Asses to run;
And a _Hog to be Hunted_, to make up the fun!

The regulation of licensed houses was not quite so strictly attended to
under the Dogberry _regime_ as we have it to-day. On the occasion of
the Royston fairs, more particularly Ash Wednesday, and I think
Michaelmas, a tippler could obtain beer at almost any house around the
bottom of the Warren, and even when the supervision became less lax,
within the memory of many persons living, the private residents had got
so much accustomed to the practice, that they kept it up by a
colourable deference to the law which led them to sell a person a piece
of straw for the price of a pint of beer and then give them the beer!
So rooted had this habit become under the laxity of the old system that
many persons, I believe, deluded themselves with the belief that
somehow or other they were only exercising their birthright conferred
by charter in ages that are gone! Charters did sometimes grant some
curious things, but I believe I am right in saying that the charters
conferred upon the monks, who were the original governors of Royston,
contain no such easy way of evading the licensing laws of the 19th
century! This kind of thing happened at other "feasts" and looks a
little more like barter than charter.

In some other respects, however, the old Dogberry _regime_ was more
strict than the present. Thus for the Fifth of November in {101} the
first quarter of this century we find the following for Royston--

"Ordered that notice be given that the law will be enforced against all
persons detected in letting off squibs, crackers, or other fireworks in
the street or any other part of this town, and that the constable be
ordered to inform against any person so offending."

Stage plays were not unknown, and whether by strolling players or some
local thespians "She stoops to Conquer" was a favourite among ambitious
flights, with a lively tail end of such tit-bits as "Bombastes
Furioso," "The Devil to pay," and "The transformations of Mad Moll," &c.

Intimately bound up with manners and customs was, of course, the
lingering belief in witches, fairies, brownies, drolls, and all the
uncanny beings which George Stephenson's "puffing billy" has frightened
away into the dark corners of the earth! The subject is too broad for
general reference here, but there are a few local remnants of the
"black arts" which stamped their devotees a