F.R.S.L. and E.

Long Meg of Westminster.—­I am not quite of DR. RIMBAULT’S opinion, that Long Meg of Westminster is a fictitious personage.  I believe her to have been as much a real wonton as Moll Cutpurse was a century later.

If the large stone shown as Long Meg’s grave had been anywhere else within the walls of Westminster Abbey than where it is, I should have had great dockets about the Westminster tradition.  But Long Meg, there is reason to believe from the numerous allusions to her in the Elizabethan dramatists, was a heroine after the Reformation, and her burial, therefore, in the cloisters, where few people of wealth or good reputation were buried between 1538 and 1638, seems to me a common occurrence.  Had Islip or Esteney buried her among the abbots in the cloister, I could then have joined in DR. RIMBAULT’S surprise.  I have altered the passage, however, to “marking, the grave, it is said.”  This will meet, I trust, DR. RIMBAULT’S objection, though I have Gifford to support me in the passage as it at present stands: 

“There is a penny story-book of this tremendous virago [Westminster Meg], who performed many wonderful exploits about the time that Jack the Giant Killer flourished.  She was buried, as all the world knows, in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, where a huge stone is still pointed out to the Whitsuntide visitors as her gravestone.”

—­Gifford’s Ben Jonson, viii. 78.

Let me add, that I am much obliged to DR. RIMBAULT, as well as to other correspondents, for corrections and still more valuable additions to my book, printed in “NOTES AND QUERIES.”

PETER CUNNINGHAM

The Churchwardens’ Accounts of St. Antholin’s (Vol. i., pp. 180, 260.).—­In my additions to Mr. Cunningham’s Handbook for London, I noticed two folio volumes of churchwardens’ accounts, belonging to the parish of St. Antholin’s, that had accidentally got away from the custody of their proper guardians.  This notice roused from his slunbers one of the said guardians, the present overseer of the parish, W.C., Junior, who stated in your journal of February 23. that

    “The churchwardens’ accounts are in good preservation, and
    present (in an unbroken series) the parish expenditure for
    nearly three centuries.”

The worthy overseer also wishes to impress your readers with a belief that I had been misled by Thorpe’s Catalogue, and that the books to which I referred were merely extracts.  In justice to myself, I therefore give the entries in Thorpe’s Catalogue verbatim as they occur.  Your readers will then be better able to judge which is the “true” Dromio:—­

    “The Churchwardens’ Accounts from 1615 to 1752 of the Parish of
    St. Antholin’s, London.  Folio, 3l. 3s.