As when you join’d hands in holy quire. 
  If to these conditions, without all fear,
  Of your own accord you will freely swear,
  A gammon of bacon you shall receive,
  And beare it hence with love and good leave,
  For this is our custom at Dunmow well known,
  Though the sport be ours, the bacon’s your own.”

For the custom of riding the black ram, and the penal rhyme thereto attached, we refer the reader to the Spectator, No. 614.

The following rhyming wills have been proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury: 

  “The fifth of May,
  Being airy and gay
  And to hip not inclined,
  But of vigorous mind,
  And my body in health. 
  I’ll dispose of my wealth,
  And all I’m to leave
  On this side the grave,
  To some one or other,
  And I think to my brother;
  Because I foresaw
  That my brethren in law,
  If I did not take care,
  Would come in for their share,
  Which I nowise intended,
  ’Till their manners are mended,
  And of that God knows there’s no sign. 
  I do therefore enjoin,
  And do strictly command,
  Of which witness my hand,
  That naught I have got
  Be brought into hotchpot: 
  But I give and devise,
  As much as in me lies,
  To the son of my mother,
  My own dear brother. 
  And to have and to hold
  All my silver and gold,
  As th’ affectionate pledges
  Of his brother, JOHN HEDGES.”

In the next, the items are more curious and particular: 

  “What I am going to bequeath
  When this frail part submits to death—­
  But still I hope the spark divine,
  With its congenial stars shall shine,
  My good executors fulfill,
  And pay ye fairly my last will,
  With first and second codicil. 
  And first I give to dear Lord Hinton,
  At Twyford school now, not at Winton,
  One hundred guineas and a ring,
  Or some such memorandum thing,
  And truly much I should have blunder’d,
  Had I not given another hundred
  To dear Earl Paulett’s second son,
  Who dearly loves a little fun. 
  Unto my nephew, Stephen Langdon,
  Of whom none says he e’er has wrong done,
  The civil laws he loves to hash,
  I give two hundred pounds in cash. 
  One hundred pounds to my niece, Tudor,
  (With luring eyes one Clark did view her,)
  And to her children just among ’em,
  A hundred more—­and not to wrong ’em,
  In equal shares I freely give it,
  Not doubting but they will receive it. 
  To Betsy Mudford and Mary Lee,
  If they with Mrs. Mudford be,
  Because they round the year did dwell
  In Davies-street, and serv’d full well. 
  The first ten pounds, the other twenty,
  And girls, I hope that will content ye. 
  In seventeen hundred and sixty-nine,
  This with my hand I write and sign,
  The sixteenth day of fair October,