seem to have proved several degree more aggravating than Modestine in the Cevennes, for John Yevan 'was fayne and glad to make a cambicion (exchange) by the waye, to his gret hurte and hynderance,' and felt much injured at being called upon to account for the missing mule on his return. The good man's knowledge of legal jargon seems to have been oral rather than literary, as he invoked the magic of the law by demanding a 'wryte of sorserare,' in which it is not easy to recognise a writ of _certiorari_. [Illustration: '_Hakeney._'] One of the most deadly of vicarious insults was to crop the tails of your adversary's horses; it would seem to have been as bad as the biblical custom of cutting off the skirts of his messengers. John Enot, archdeacon of Buckingham in the fifteenth century, complained tearfully that one Thomas Coneloye (was he a lawless Irish Connelly?) prevented him from carrying out his duties in the punishment of sinners and had caused the tails of his horses to be cut. It was a similar insult to the hot-tempered Thomas Becket that caused that archbishop's furious denunciation of his enemies and led to his murder and so to his canonisation, from which it follows that we owe Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_ to the curtailment of the archbishop's horses. From insult to assault is a short journey, and horses have brought so many to the 'demnition bow-wows,' that I am reminded at this point of the adventure of the vicar and the dog and the door-key, which fell out in this wise. William Russell, vicar of Mere in Somerset, some time during the reign of Henry VI., left his church at five o'clock one Good Friday evening, having been 'bysyly occupyed all that day before in hyryng of confessions.' He locked up his church and turned homewards, but on his way met one of his parishioners, John Totyn, an evil man, 'not dredyng God ne the censers of the chirche.' Totyn had in his hand a seven-foot staff with 'a grete pyke of yren' at one end and with him was 'an horryble grete Dogge called a lymer,' and he at once attacked the vicar and 'provoked and stered his saide dogge to renne upon hym, callyng hym by his name and saide Hay Dewgarde.' I am not clear whether the dog's name was Dieugarde, which seems rather unlikely, or Dugald, which is possible, but I rather incline to the idea that Totyn really said 'good dog,' with a provincial accent--'Hey! gude darg!' in fact. Anyhow, 'the saide dogge, knowyng the condicions of his maister, ran upon (the vicar) and bote hym by the arme in iij places and pullyd hym downe to grounde twyes and so was likely then to have been murthored by the saide John Totyn and his dogge,'--the good vicar at the recollection of the exciting incident becomes oblivious of grammar and changes the subject of his verbs--'but as God woold he smote the said dogge with the chirche dore key under his ere, and with that the said dogge departed.' Next day worthy William Russell trotted off to his patron, the Abbot of Glastonbury, and