ners, which the sexton says were carried some time in
the wars. Tradition says also, that there is a fine old painting in
fresco, whitewashed over from the Reformation, but of that I know
nothing. The town had other antiquities. Its stocks were a marvel of
age and efficiency. A ducking-stool for scolds yet remained in the
courthouse, beside the beam with which they weighed witches against
the Bible; but the oldest thing in Great Tattleton was its charter: a
native antiquary demonstrated, that it had been signed by King John
the day after Runnymede; and among other superannuated privileges, it
conferred on the free burghers the right of trade and toll, ward and
gibbet, besides that of electing their own mayor and one loyal
commoner, to serve in the king's parliament.

We all believed that Palladium of Tattleton to be kept somewhere in
the church, and generations had returned their representatives
according to its provisions. But the bounds of the borough were so
devious, and the free burghers so thinly scattered among us, that all
elections within the memory of man had been quietly managed by the
mayor, the town-clerk, and the sheriff. Moreover, an old gateway and
two crazy posts had something to do in the business by right of
ancient custom. In short, Tattleton was what the advocates of the
whole Bill were apt to term a close and sometimes a rotten borough.
Its representation had become hereditary--some said, since the Long
Parliament--in the Stopford family, who owned at least half the soil,
and were supposed to be as old as its charter. One of their ancestors
had built the church, another wore the armour and captured the banners
that hung in it. The family pew and vault were there; and they had
been squires and justices of peace from father to son, dispensing
hospitality, work, and law, at their seat of Fern Hall--a great old
manor-house, standing deep in a thickly-wooded dell not half a mile
from Tattleton. So far as I could learn, the Stopfords had given no
ornaments to state or church, but theirs was pre-eminently a safe
house. Its martlets were generally fortunate in their connections; and
its chiefs had supported the character of moderate reformers, each in
his generation. At home, they were lenient magistrates and prudent
landlords, never overtaxing their tenantry, and rarely enforcing the
game-laws. None of them ever took a first step; but all improvements
in the neighbourhood, if once commenced, were certain o