ore perfect. That at
Yaxley consists of a pair of wheels, cut out of sheet iron, which
measure a little over two feet in diameter, and are similar and
concentric, but separate. The Long Stratton wheels, on the other hand,
have a pin passing through the centre which holds them together, and
around which they revolve, each of them independently. To the same pin
is attached the forked end of a long pendent handle, which was held by
the sexton. Each wheel is pierced with three holes through which strings
were passed, the total number coinciding with that of the six feasts
sacred to Mary, or possibly to the six days of the week excluding
Sunday, which did not rank as a fast day.

The instrument was worked in the following manner. Should a devout
person desire to keep a Lady Fast, he or she repaired to the church to
determine by the aid of the wheel which of the days or anniversaries
should be observed. Thereupon the sexton took the wheel, which he either
hung up or held at arm's length by means of a ring at the termination of
the handle. He then set the wheel in motion, and the votary, standing
by, caught at the strings as they spun round. Whichever string was
caught decided the question on what day the fast was to be begun,
whether on the feast of the Annunciation or that of the Assumption, or
any other of the six feasts, or days of the week, of which the several
strings were emblematical. The feast of the Assumption was known as Lady
Day in Harvest, being observed on the fifteenth of August.

The compromise, which we style the Reformation, at first inclined to the
retention of the Saturday fast; and, indeed, the legislature interfered
to enforce its more regular observance. In 1548 a remarkable measure
was enacted with this object, not so much, it is to be feared, out of
any genuine concern for religion as for the benefit of the fishing
community, whose interests had been injuriously affected by recent
ecclesiastical changes.

"Albeit," it recites, "the King's subjects now having a more perfect and
clear light of the Gospel and true word of God, through the infinite
cleansing and mercy of Almighty God, by the hand of the King's Majesty
and his most noble father of famous memory, promulgate, shewed, declared
and opened, and thereby perceiving that one day or one kind of meat of
itself is not more holy, more pure, or more clean than another, for that
all days and all meats be of their nature of one equal purity,
cleanness