VANISHED CUSTOMS.

Mataura Ensign, 18 September 1906, Page 1

VANISHED CUSTOMS.

('Pearson's Weekly.') —Bad Days for Highwaymen.— Our oJd knights of tho road, as highwaymen were called, received ehoit shrift once they were caught. Hanging was their certain fate. The last highwayman so to suffer was William Rea, at tho Old Bailey, on .Inly 4, 1828. —Master of tho Revels.— In merrier times amusements were so important that the King hat! a master of tho revels to properly superintend them. Now revels are gone, tho last holder of the office- being Solomon Dayrolle, who died about 1737. —A Tax Now Abolished.— For an article coming from one part of England to another to have to pay duty sounds absurd, but on all coal coming to London an octroi duty used to .bo paid, and the last duty was paid as late as 1886, when Lord Randolph Churchill did away with it.

—Whipped by the Hangman.— To be whipped through the streets by the hangman is a ■queer 61d punishment no longer awarded, the last known instance of it being on May 8, 1832, when a man was whipped through the streets of Glasgow by the hangman for taking part In a riot. —Tho Lost Execution at the Tower.—

Many imposing passages in English history bavo ended with an execution at tho Tower of London. Imprisonment there, and sometimes execution, was the lot of tho most famous men and women who lost the King's favor or broke his laws. Tho last great man to lose his head at tho Tower was Lord Lovat, for rebellion, on April 9, 174 T. —Marriage by Blacksmith.—

Who has not hoard of the runaway marriages at Gretna Green ? There a blacksmith performed the ceremony to eloping couples without tho usual formalities and in the most irregular manner. For years parsons and magistrates vainly tried to stop it, and tho unofficial clergyman was eventually suppressed, the last marriage taking place there being in 1866. —A Highwayman Herein times when crime took a more romantic huo than it does to-day, some of the most fearful rascals became popular favorites and heroes. Tho last such emotional outburst was over Dick Turpin, the famous highwayman, who, after a lengthy career of crime, during, which he is said to have performed somo most prodigious foats, was hanged at York in April, 11739.

f—Public Funds for Public Purposes.— It was the rule, and a most indefensible one, for £IO,OOO every year—long ago it was more—to be granted by Parliament to the Secretary of the Treasury, who devoted the amount to party purposes in favor of whatever Government happened to be in power. The last time it was done was in 1956, subsequent to which Lord Randolph Churchill forbade it, and it has never been revived. —Wlien Ireland had a Parliament.— More than ono independent Parliament within these' kingdoms might sound impossible now, but St. Stephen's has only swallowed up other legislative bodies of component parts of the United Kingdom, the last such Parliament being that of Ireland, with the eloquent Henry Grattan as Prime Minister, which ceased to be on the last day of the eighteenth century, December 31, ISOO.

—When Germans Fought for Us.— Jt would go against tho grain with us now to hire the soldiers of other countries to light our battles for us, though this was a thing we used to do regularly. Theso "foreign mercenaries," as they were called, wo last employed in tho American War, when the United States broke away from King George's sovereignty, the war lasting from ltflfi until 1753-, during which wo employed some German troops. —Britain's Wooden Walls.— How much of England's glory centres round her old "wooden walls," as tho tvooden ships of battlo were called, nnd the famous fights they fought ? Gono for ever, in these days of steam nnd electricity and high explosives, the last battle fought for us by these ''wooden walls" was Navnrino, when, together with some French nnd Russian vessels under Admiral Codringion, thoy destroyed tho Turkish fleet in 1827.