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ing trait of our Bridegroom's clownish civility: "He hath Heraldry enough to place every man by his armes."

Coles, in his "Adam in Eden," speaking of rosemary, says: "The garden rosemary is called rosemarinum coronarium, the rather because women have been accustomed to make crowns and garlands thereof."

The following is in Parkinson's Garden of Flowers, fol. Lond. 1629, p. 598: "The bayleaves are necessary both for civil uses and for physic, yea, both for the sick and for the sound, both for the living and for the dead. It serveth to adorn the house of God as well as man-to crowne or encircle, as with a garland, the heads of the living, and to sticke and decke forth the bodies of the dead; so that, from the cradle to the grave, we have still use of it, we have still need of it." Ibid. p. 426: "Rosemary is almost of as great use as Bays as well for civill as physical purposes for civil uses, as all doe know, at weddings, funerals, &c. to bestow among friends."

Coles, in his Art of Simpling, &c. p. 73, repeats the observation of Rosemary, that it "strengthens the senses and memory."

In a most rare work, entitled "A strange Metamorphosis of Man, transformed into a Wildernesse, deciphered in Characters," 12mo. Lond. 1634; in No. 37, "The Bay Tree," it is observed that "hee is fit for halls and stately roomes, where if there be a wedding kept, or such like feast, he will be sure to take a place more eminent than the rest. He is a notable smell feast, and is so good a fellow in them, that almost it is no feast without him. He is a great companion with the Rosemary, who is as good a gossip in all feasts as he a trencher-man."

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p. 155.

Similar to this, in the Marrow of Complements, 12mo. Lond. 1655, p. 49, a rustic lover tells his mistress, that, at their wedding, "Wee'l have Rosemary and Bayes to vill a bow-pot, and with the zame Ile trim that vorehead of my best vore-horse."

In the Knight of the Burning Pestle, Act v. sc. 1, we read: "I will have no great store of company at the wedding, a couple of neighbours and their wives, and we will have a capon in stewed broth, with marrow, and a good piece of beef stuck with Rosemary." (5) See "Lex Forcia," a rare tract on the Abuses of Great Schools, 4to, Lond. 1698, p. 11.

GARLANDS AT WEDDINGS.

NUPTIAL Garlands are of the most remote antiquity. They appear to have been equally used by the Jews and the Heathens. (1)

Among the Anglo Saxons, after the benediction in the church, both the bride and the bridegroom were crowned with crowns of flowers, kept in the church for that purpose. (a)

(a) Strutt's Manners and Customs, vol. i. p. 76.

In the Eastern Church the chaplets used on these occasions appear to have been blessed. (2)

The Nuptial Garlands were sometimes made of Myrtle. (b)

In England, in the time of Henry VIII. the bride wore a garland of corn ears; sometimes one of flowers. (3)

(b) Selden, ut supra.

NOTES TO GARLANDS AT WEDDINGS.

(1) Seldeni Uxor Hebraica, Opera, tom. iii. p. 655. "Coronarum nuptialium mentio occurrit apud veteres paganos, quæ item in Ornamentis Sponsorum, Ebraicis, ut supra ostendimus."

"Among the Romans, when the marriage day was come, the bride was bound to have a chaplet of flowers or hearbes upon her head, and to weare a girdle of sheeps wool about her middle, fastened with a true-loves-knot, the which her husband must loose. Here heuce rose the proverb: He hath undone her virgin's girdle; that is, of a mayde he hath made her a woman. Vaughan's Golden Grove, 8vo. Lond. 1608, Signat. O. 2.

The author of the Convivial Antiquities, in his description of the rites at marriages in his country and time, has not omitted Garlands: " Antequam eatur ad Templum Jentaculum Sponsæ et Invitatis apponitur, Serta atque Corolla distribuuntur.' Antiquitates Convivial. fol. 68.

(2) Seldeni Uxor Hebraica, Opera, tom. iii. p. 661. "Coronas tenent a tergo paranymphi, quæ Capitibus Sponsorum iterum a Sacerdote non sine benedictione solenni aptantur." The form is given, p. 667: "Benedic, Domine, Annulum istum et Coronam istam, ut sicut Annulus circumdat digitum hominis et Corona Caput, ita Gratia Spiritus Sancti circumdet Sponsum et Sponsam, ut videant Filios et Filias usque ad tertium aut quartam Generationem," &c.

(3) Polydore Vergil.-" Spicea autem Corona (interdum florea) Sponsa redimita, caput, præsertim ruri deducitur, vel manu gerit ipsam Coronam." Compare Langley's Transl. fol. 9 b.

In dressing out Grisild for her marriage, in the Clerk of Oxenford's Tale, in Chaucer, the chaplet is not forgotten: "A coroune on hire hed they han ydressed."

Concerning the crowns or garlands used by brides, see Leland, Col. vol. v. p. 332.

In the Dialogue of Dives and Pauper, fol. 1493," The sixte precepte, chap. 2," is the following curious passage: "Thre ornamentys longe pryncypaly to a wyfe: A rynge on hir fynger, a broch on hir brest, and a Garlond on hir hede. The ringe betokenethe true

love, as I have seyd; the broch betokennethe clennesse in herte and chastitye that she oweth to have; the GARLANDE bytokeneth gladnesse and the dignitye of the sacrament of wedlok."

In Mr. Nichols's Churchwardens' Accounts, 4to. 1797, among those of St. Margaret's Westminster, under the year 1540 is the following item: "Paid to Alice Lewis, a goldsmith's wife of London, for a serclett to marry maydens in, the 26th day of September, £3 10s."

In the old play called "Amends for Ladies, with the Merry Prankes of Moll Cut-purse, by Nath. Field," 4to. Lond. 1639, Scene the last, when the marriages are agreed upon, there is a stage direction to set garlands upon the heads of the maid and widow that are to be married.

In the "Glossarium Suio-Gothicum, auctore I. Ihre, fol. Upsal, 1769, p. 1164, v. KRONA, we read: "Sponsarum ornatus erat Corona gestamen, qui mos hodieque pleno usu apud Ruricolas viget.'

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Dallaway, in his Constantinople, &c. 4to. Lond. 1797, p. 375, tells us: "Marriage is by them (of the Greek Church) called the matrimonial coronation, from the crowns or garlands with which the parties are decorated, and which they solemnly dissolve on the eighth day following."

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aux nouvelles mariés, personne n'en doute: les fleurs en géneral, et les Roses particulierement, étant consacrés à Venus, aux Graces, et l'Amour."

I know not Gosson's authority for the following passage: "In som countries the Bride is crowned by the matrons with a GARLAND OF

PRICKLES, and so delivered unto her husband that hee might know he hath tied himself to a thorny plesure." Schoole of Abuse, Svo. Lond. 1587, Signat. R. Or rather the Ephemerides of Phialo, &c. by Steph. Gosson, 8vo. Lond. 1579, p. 73.

GLOVES AT WEDDINGS.

THE giving of Gloves at marriages is a custom of remote antiquity. See before, under the head of Bridegroom Men.

The following is an extract from a letter to Mr. Winwood from Sir Dudley Carleton, dated London, January 1604, concerning the manner of celebrating the marriage between Sir Philip Herbert and the Lady Susan :

"No ceremony was omitted of Bride-cakes, Points, Garters, and Gloves."(a)

In Ben Jonson's play of the Silent Woman, Lady Haughty observes to Morose,—" We see no ensigns of a wedding here, no character of a bridale; where be our Skarves and our Gloves?" (1)

The custom of giving away Gloves at weddings occurs in the old play of "The

Miseries of inforced Marriage." See Reed's Old Plays, vol. v. p. 8. (2) White Gloves still continue to be presented to the guests on this occasion.

The late Rev. Dr. Lort had inserted the following Note in an interleaved copy of my Observations on Popular Antiquities, 8vo. 1777: "At Wrexham in Flintshire, on occasion of the marriage of the surgeon and apothecary of the place, August 1785, I saw at the doors of his own and neighbours' houses, throughout the street where he lived, large boughs and posts of trees, that had been cut down and fixed there, filled with white paper, cut in the shape of women's Gloves and of white ribbons."

NOTES TO GLOVES AT WEDDINGS.

(1) The bride's Gloves are noticed in Stephens's Character of "A Plaine Country Bride," p. 358: "She hath no rarity worth observance, if her Gloves be not miraculous and singular; those be the trophy of some forlorne sutor, who contents himself with a large Offering, or this glorious sentence, that she should have bin his bedfellow."

It appears from Selden's Uxor Hebraica, Opera, tom. iii. p. 673, that the Belgic custom at marriages was for the priest to ask of the bridegroom the Ring, and, if they could be had, a pair of red Gloves, with three pieces of silver money in them (arrhæ loco) - then putting the Gloves into the bridegroom's

(a) Winwood's Memorials, vol. ii. p. 43. See also Gent. Mag. for Feb. 1787, vol. lvii. p. 143.

right hand, and joining it with that of the bride, the Gloves were left, on loosing their right hands, in that of the bride.

In Professor Ihre's Glossarium Suio-Gothicum, v. HANDSKE, we read, " De More Veterum mittendi Chirothecam in rei fidem cum Nuntio, quem quopiam ablegabant, alibi agetur, vocabatur id genus Symbolum Jertekn." Dufresne says "Chirothecam in signum consensus dare."-" Etiam Rex in signum sui Consensus, suam ad hoc mittere debet Chirothecam."

(*) So also in Herrick's Hesperides, p. 252: "What posies for our wedding Rings,

What Gloves we'll give, and Ribbanings." In Arnold's Chronicle, (about the date of 1521,) chiefly concerning London, Signat.

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S. iiii. among "The artycles upon whiche is to inquyre in the Visitacyons of Ordynaryes of Chyrches," we read, "Item, whether the Curat refuse to do the solemnysacyon of lawfull matrymonye before he have gyfte of money, hoses, or Gloves."

There is some pleasantry in the vulgar, rather amorous than superstitious, notion, that if a woman surprises a man sleeping, and can steal a kiss without waking him, she has a right to demand a pair of Gloves. Thus Gay in his Sixth Pastoral:

"Cicly, brisk maid, steps forth before the rout,

And kiss'd, with smacking lip, the snoring lout;

For custom says, whoe'er this venture

proves,

For such a kiss demands a pair of Gloves." In the North of England a custom still prevails at Maiden Assizes, i. e. when no prisoner is capitally convicted, to present the Judges, &c. with white Gloves. It should seem, by the following passage in Clavell's Recantation of an Ill-led Life, 4to. Lond. 1634, that anciently this present was made by such prisoners as received pardon after condemnation. It occurs in his dedication "to the impartiall Judges of his Majestie's Bench, my Lord Chiefe Justice and his other three honourable Assistants."

"Those pardon'd men, who taste their Prince's loves,

(As married to new life) do give you Gloves," &c.

Clavell was a highwayman, who had just received the King's pardon. He dates from the King's Bench Prison, October 1627. Fuller, in his "Mixt Contemplations on these Times," 8vo. Lond. 1660, says, p. 62: "It passeth for a generall report of what was customary in former times, that the Sheriff of the County used to present the Judge with a pair of white Gloves, at those which we call Mayden Assizes, viz. when no malefactor is put to death therein."

Among the lots in "A Lottery presented before the late Queene's Majesty, at the Lord Chancellor's House, 1601," in Davison's Poetical Rapsody, Svo. Lond. 1611, p. 44, is, No. 8,

"A Paire of Gloves.

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For that you love not fooles that are her friends."

Can the custom of dropping or sending the Glove, as the signal of a challenge, have been derived from the circumstance of its being the cover of the hand, and therefore put for the hand itself? The giving of the hand is well known to intimate that the person who does so will not deceive, but stand to his agreement. To "shake hands upon it" would not, it should seem, be very delicate in an agreement to fight, and therefore Gloves may, possibly, have been deputed as substitutes. We may, perhaps, trace the same idea in Wedding Gloves.

GARTERS AT WEDDING S.

GARTERS at weddings have been already noticed under the head of Gloves. There was formerly a custom in the North of England, (1) which will be thought to have bordered very closely upon indecency, and strongly marks the grossness of manners that prevailed among our ancestors: (2) it was for the young men present at a wedding to strive, immediately after the ceremony, who could first pluck off the Bride's Garters from her

legs. This was done before the very altar. The bride was generally gartered with ribbons for the occasion. Whoever were so fortunate as to be victors in this singular species of contest, during which the bride was often obliged to scream out, and was very frequently thrown down, bore them about the church in triumph.

These Garters, it should seem, were an ciently worn as trophies in the hats. (3)

NOTES TO GARTERS AT WEDDINGS.

(1) From the information of a person at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, who had often seen it done. A clergyman in Yorkshire told me that to prevent this very indecent assault, it is usual for the bride to give garters out of her bosom. I have sometimes thought this a fragment of the ancient ceremony of loosening the virgin zone, or girdle, a custom that needs no explanation. Compare also the "British Apollo," fol. Lond. 1710, vol. iii. No. 91.

(*) From passages in different works, it should seem that the striving for Garters was originally after the bride had been put to bed. See "Folly in Print; or a Book of Rhymes," p. 121: Stephens's "Character of a Plaine Countrey Bride," p. 359: the old song of Arthur of Bradley: and a "Sing-Song on Clarinda's Wedding," in R. Fletcher's Poems, 8vo. Lond. 1656, p. 230. See also Ritson's Ancient Songs, 8vo. Lond. 1792, p. 297.

I find the following in "The Epithalamie on Sir Clipesby Crew and his Lady," in Herrick's Hesperides, p. 128:

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Quickly, quickly then prepare, And let the young men and the bride-maids share

Your Garters; and their joyntts Encircle with the Bridegroom's Points." In Christopher Brooke's Epithalamium in England's Helicon, Signat. R. 3, we read: "Youths, take his Poynts, your wonted right:

And Maydens, take your due, her Garters." A note to a curious and rare tract, 4to. 1686, entitled "A Joco-Serious Discourse in two Dialogues, between a Northumberland Gentleman and his Tenant, a Scotchman, both old Cavaliers," &c. p. 24, tells us: "The Piper at a Wedding has always a piece of the Bride's Garter tyed about his Pipes.'

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(3) "Which all the Saints, and some, since Martyrs,

Wore in their Hats like Wedding
Garters."

Hudibras, P. I. c. ii. 1. 524.

Misson, in his "Travels in England," translated by Ozell, p. 352, says: "When Bed time is come, the Bride-Men pull off the Bride's Garters, which she had before unty'd, that they might hang down and so prevent a curious hand from coming too near her knee. This done, and the Garters being fasten'd to the Hats of the Gallants, the Bride-Maids carry the Bride into the Bride-Chamber, where they undress her and lay her in Bed."

It is the custom in Normandy for the bride to bestow her garter on some young man as a favour, or sometimes it is taken from her.

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In Aylet's "Divine and Moral Speculations," 8vo. Lond. 1654, is a copy of verses on sight of a most honorable Lady's Wedding Garter." I am of opinion that the origin of the ORDER OF THE GARTER is to be traced to this nuptial custom, anciently common to both court and country.

Among the lots in "A Lottery presented before the late Queene's Majesty at the Lord Chancelor's House, 1601" (Davison's Poetical Rapsody, 8vo. Lond. 1611, p. 45), there occurs, No. 14,

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