a little room at the upper end of the hall, where stands a square or round table, perhaps in the old time was an oratory; in every old Gothic hall is one, viz. at Dracot, Lekham, Alderton, &c.) The meat was served up by watch-words.  Jacks are but an invention of the other age:  the poor boys did turn the spits, and licked the dripping-pan, and grew to be huge lusty knaves.  The beds of the servants and retainers were in the great halls, as now in the guard-chamber, &c.  The hearth was commonly in the middle, as at most colleges, whence the saying, “Round about our coal-fire.”  Here in the halls were the mummings, cob-loaf-stealing, and a great number of old Christmas plays performed.  Every baron and gentleman of estate kept great horses for a man at arms.  Lords had their armories to furnish some hundreds of men.  The halls of justices of the peace were dreadful to behold, the skreens were garnished with corslets and helmets, gaping with open mouth, with coats of mail, lances, pikes, halberts, brown bills, batterdashers, bucklers, and the modern colivers and petronils (in King Charles I.’s time) turned into muskets and pistols.  Then were entails in fashion, (a good prop for monarchy).  Destroying of manors began temp.  Henry VIII., but now common; whereby the mean people live lawless, nobody to govern them, they care for nobody, having no dependance on anybody.  By this method, and by the selling of the church-lands, is the ballance of the Government quite altered, and put into the hands of the common people.  No ale-houses, nor yet inns were there then, unless upon great roads:  when they had a mind to drink, they went to the fryaries; and when they travelled they had entertainment at the religious houses for three days, if occasion so long required.  The meeting of the gentry was not then at tipling-houses, but in the fields or forest, with their hawks and hounds, with their bugle horns in silken bordries.  This part very much abounded with forests and parks.  Thus were good spirits kept up, and good horses and hides made; whereas now the gentry of the nation are so effeminated by coaches, they are so far from managing great horses, that they know not how to ride hunting-horses, besides the spoiling of several trades dependant.  In the last age every yRoman almost kept a sparrow-hawk; and it was a divertisement for young gentlewomen to manage sparrow-hawks and merlins.  In King Henry VIII.’s time, one Dame Julian writ The Art of Hawking in English verse, which is in Wilton Library.  This country was then a lovely champain, as that about Sherston and Cots-wold; very few enclosures, unless near houses:  my grandfather Lyte did remember when all between Cromhall (at Eston) and Castle-Comb was so, when Easton, Yatton and Comb did intercommon together.  In my remembrance much hath been enclosed, and every year, more and more is taken in.  Anciently the Leghs (now corruptly called Slaights) i. e. pastures, were noble large grounds, as yet the Demesne Lands at Castle