for some infamous robbery or murder.  Nay, one Rigby, a scoundrel of the very dregs of the parliament rebels, did at that time expose these venerable persons to sale, and would actually have sold them for slaves, if any one would have bought them.”

In a note, it is added that Rigby moved twice in the Long Parliament,

“That those lords and gentlemen who were prisoners, should be sold as slaves to Argiere, or sent to the new plantations in the West Indies, because he had contracted with two merchants for that purpose.”

Col.  Rigby, so justly denounced by Barwick, sat in the Long Parliament for the borough of Wigan, and in the Parliarment of 1658-9 represented Lancashire.  He was a native of Preston, was bred to the law, and held a colonel’s rank in the parliamentary army.  He was one of the committee of sequestrators for Lancashire, served at the siege of Latham House, and in 1649 was created Baron of the Exchequer, but was superseded by Cromwell.

Calamy, the historian and chaplain of the Nonconformists, treated Walker’s statement quoted by MR. SANSOM as a fiction, and advised him to expunge the passage.  See his Church and Dissenters compared as to Persecution, 1719, pp. 40, 41.

A.B.R.

North Side of Churchyards (Vol. ii., pp. 55. 189).—­One of your writers has recently endeavoured to explain the popular dislike to burial on the north side of the church, by reference to the place of the churchyard cross, the sunniness, and the greater resort of the people to the south. {254} These are not only meagre reasons, but they are incorrect.

The doctrine of regions was coeval with the death of Our Lord.  The east was the realm of the oracles; the especial Throne of God.  The west was the domain of the people; the Galilee of all nations was there.  The south, the land of the mid-day, was sacred to things heavenly and divine.  The north was the devoted region of Satan and his hosts; the lair of demons, and their haunt.  In some of our ancient churches, over against the font, and in the northern walls, there was a devil’s door.

It was thrown open at every baptism for the escape of the fiend, and at all other seasons carefully closed.  Hence came the old dislike to sepulture at the north.

R.S.  HAWKER.

Morwenstow, Cornwall.

Sir John Perrot (Vol. ii., p. 217.).—­This Query surprises me.  Sir John Perrot was not governor of Ireland in the reign of Henry VIII., and your correspondent E.N.W. is mistaken in his belief that Sir John was beheaded in the reign of Elizabeth.  He was convicted of treason 16th June, 1592, and died in the Tower in September following.  In the British Plutarch, 3rd edit., 1791, vol. i. p. 121., is The Life of Sir John Perrot.  The authorities given are Cox’s History of Ireland; Life of Sir John Perrot, 8vo., 1728; Biographia Britannica; Salmon’s Chronological History; to which I may add the following references:—­