his trick to excess, and his cries of 'Oh Lard! Oh Lard!' were
familiar sounds in Westminster Hall at the time when the Salamanca
doctor was at the flood of his fortune.

Note E.--Hour-glasses in Pulpits.

In those days it was customary to have an hour-glass stationed in
a frame of iron at the side of the pulpit, and visible to the whole
congregation. It was turned up as soon as the text was announced, and a
minister earned a name as a lazy preacher if he did not hold out until
the sand had ceased to run. If, on the other hand, he exceeded that
limit, his audience would signify by gapes and yawns that they had
had as much spiritual food as they could digest. Sir Roger L'Estrange
(_Fables_, Part II. Fab. 262) tells of a notorious spin-text who, having
exhausted his glass and being half-way through a second one, was at
last arrested in his career by a valiant sexton, who rose and departed,
remarking as he did so, 'Pray, sir, be pleased when you have done to
leave the key under the door.'

Note F.--Disturbances at the old Gast House of Little Burton.

The circumstances referred to by the Mayor of Taunton in his allusion
to the Drummer of Tedsworth are probably too well known to require
elucidation. The haunting of the old Gast House at Burton would,
however, be fresh at that time in the minds of Somersetshire folk,
occurring as it did in 1677. Some short account from documents of that
date may be of interest.

'The first night that I was there, with Hugh Mellmore and Edward Smith,
they heard as it were the washing of water over their heads. Then,
taking the candle and going up the stairs, there was a wet cloth thrown
at them, but it fell on the stairs. They, going up further, there was
another thrown as before. And when they were come up into the chamber
there stood a bowl of water, looking white, as though soap had been used
in it. The bowl just before was in the kitchen, and could not be carried
up but through the room where they were. The next thing was a terrible
noise, like a clap of thunder, and shortly afterwards they heard a great
scratching about the bedstead, and after that great knocking with a
hammer against the bed's-head, so that the two maids that were in bed
cried out for help. Then they ran up the stairs, and there lay the
hammer on the bed, and on the bed's-head there were near a thousand
prints of the hammer. The maids said that they were scratched and
pinched with a hand which had exceeding lon