Stanza 2. Polly Perkin.  On June 1, 1770, according to the Widford register, Samuel Perkins married Mary Lanham.  This may have been Polly.

Stanza 3. Carter ...  Lily.  The late Mrs. Tween, a daughter of Randal Norris, Lamb’s friend, and a resident in Widford, told Canon Ainger that Carter and Lily were servants at Blakesware.  Lily had noticeably red cheeks.  Lamb would have seen them often when he stayed there as a boy.  In Cussan’s Hertfordshire is an entertaining account of William Plumer’s widow’s adhesion to the old custom of taking the air.  She rode out always—­from Gilston, only a few miles from Widford and Blakesware—­in the family chariot, with outriders and postilion (a successor to Lily), and so vast was the equipage that “turn outs” had to be cut in the hedges (visible to this day), like sidings on a single-line railway, to permit others to pass.  The Widford register gives John Lilley, died October 18, 1812, aged 85, and Johanna Lilley, died January 1, 1823, aged 90.  It also gives Benjamin Carter’s marriage, in 1781, but not his death.

Stanza 4. Clemitson’s widow.  Mrs. Tween told Canon Ainger that Clemitson was the farmer of Blakesware farm.  I do not find the name in the Widford register.  An Elizabeth Clemenson is there.

Stanza 4. Good Master Clapton.  There are several Claptons in Widford churchyard.  Thirty years from 1827, the date of the poem, takes us to 1797:  the Clapton whose death occurred nearest that time is John Game Clapton, May 5, 1802.

Stanza 5. Tom Dockwra.  I cannot find definite information either concerning this Dockwra or the William Dockwray, of Ware, of whom Lamb wrote in his “Table Talk” in The Athenaeum, 1834 (see Vol.  I.).  There was, however, a Joseph Docwray, of Ware, a Quaker maltster; and the late Mrs. Coe, nee Hunt, the daughter of the tenant of the water-mill at Widford in Lamb’s day, where Lamb often spent a night, told me that a poor family named Docwray lived in the neighbourhood.

Stanza 6. Worral ...  Dorrell.  I find neither Worral nor Dorrell in the Widford archives, but Morrils and Morrells in plenty, and one Horrel.  Lamb alludes to old Dorrell again in the Elia essay “New Year’s Eve,” where he is accused of swindling the family out of money.  Particulars of his fraud have perished with him, but I have no doubt it is the same William Dorrell who witnessed John Lamb’s will in 1761.  In the Table Book this stanza ended thus:—­

        With cuckoldy Worral,
        And wicked old Dorrel,
        ’Gainst whom I’ve a quarrel—­
          His end might affright us.

Stanzas 8 and 9. Fanny Hutton ...  Betsy Chambers ...  Miss Wither ...  Miss Waller.  Fanny Hutton, Betsy Chambers, Miss Wither and Miss Waller elude one altogether.  Lamb’s schoolmistress, Mrs. Reynolds, was a Miss Chambers.

* * * * *