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NOTES AND QUERIES, [n s. vn. APRIL 19, 1913.

ELECTION OF MAYORS IN THE CINQUE PORTS.

" The election of a mayor of Winchelsea is a reminder that the little Sussex town is one of the few unreformed corporations in this country, and does things differently from other boroughs. The officers of Winchelsea consist of a mayor, twelve jurats, town clerk, chamberlain, sergeant-at-maee, town sergeant, water bailiff, gaoler, six constables, and a pound driver.

" The mayor is elected annually on Easter Monday from the freemen at a Hundred Court, and all the other officers are appointed on the same day. In earlier days the method of summoning all assemblies was by blowing a horn, and in the record of the

proceedings in 1833, when no mayor was elected, it is expressly stated that the corporation was duly warned, according to ancient custom, by the sound- ing of a horn at break of day." Pall Mall Gazette, 26 March, 1913.

Tn connexion with the above the following list, taken from a MS. note (undated) made by William Lambarde at the end of the sixteenth century, may possibly be of interest. The election referred to in thg extract above took place on the Monday after Easter Day. According to the list, it should take place on the Monday after Low Sunday (alias Low Easter Day).

THE ELECTION OF THE OFFICERS IX THE POETE TOWNS AND THEIRE MEMBERS.

Day.

Sonday next after Michaelmas. Monday next after Michaelmas. Monday 3 weekes after Easter day. Sonday next after S e Bartholomes day. the day of S* Jhon de Beuerlace. on Candlemas day.

on the Annunciation of the Virgine Marie. S* Mar. Magdal. 22 Julii. on the Nativitie of the Virgine Marie, the last sayed day. Monday after S* Andrewes day. the last sayed day.

the morow after Michaelmas day, called St. Jeromes day. Monday next after Lowe Sonday.

F. LAMBARDE.

Place. Seaford Pevinsey Hasting

Rye .. ..

Tenterden .. Hyde Romney Lydde Foulkstone Dover Sandwich .. Fordiche .. Feuersham .. Wynchelsey

Baylye Baylye Baylye Maior Baylye Maior : Maior Baylye Maior Maior : Maior Maior Maior Maior

Officers.

and Jurates who choseth y e Jurates

"HUNGER STRIKE." The following letter, which appeared in The Times of 19 March, seems worth preserving in your columns : AN ANCIENT HUNGER STRIKE.

Sir, Your correspondents, in their search for oases of hunger strike, might have gone further back than the Middle Ages.

During the Arian persecution in the fourth cen- tury, Eusebius of Vercellae, with other orthodox Bishops of the West, was exiled from his diocese and held in custody more or less close at Seythopolis in Palestine. For a time he was allowed to live in the house and under the charge of Joseph, a Jewish convert of distinction. His friends were free to visit him, and to bring him food and other offerings. Iheir devotion enraged the Arians of the place. But Patrophilus, their Bishop and leader, carried off the exile not without violence, if the story as told by Eusebius is true and shut him up in a cell, from which his friends were excluded. Eusebius then refused to take the food supplied by his gaolers, and said that he would neither eat nor drink (non panem manducaturum neque aquam oibiturum) until his friends were admitted again ^ind allowed to supply him with food (necessarias tscas) as before. Patrophilus, through fear of the scandal in which the death of a brother Bishop would involve him, gave way and set Eusebius free.

Baronius gives the whole history in his Annals

lam, Sir, yours, &c.,

ALFRED DALE. Ihe University, Liverpool, March 8.

JAS. CURTIS, F.S.A.

appears the following line :
 * HAMLET.' In Act I. sc. ii. of ' Hamlet '

Then saw you not his face ?

By the context Hamlet really says, " Then you did not see his face." Every editor, following the First Folio, places a note of interrogation after the w r ord " face," which, I contend, is not required.

MAURICE JONAS.

THE DROWNING OF KATHARINE HAM- LETT : WARWICKSHIRE CORONERS' INQUESTS. Some years since I found among the Stratford papers a Coroner's Inquest on a man drowned in the .Avon, in which the arguments reminded me much of the grave- diggers in ' Hamlet.' But I found by the date that it could not have suggested any- thing to the poet, as it was too late.

Not long since, however, I had the chance at the Record Office of going through some bundles of " Ancient Indictments " which had not yet been searched. In Bundle 652, War., Coroner's Inquest on Katharine Hamlett, drowned at Tiddington on 11 Feb., 22 Eli?;., 1580, the jury found that, going down to the water, she had slipped in, so it was not counted suicide. I thought the association of the name worth noting at