=Summary.=--_Children's games_ are very ancient, and the rhymes have been handed down from very early times, so that we do not know now what they mean. Marbles, tops, and hop-scotch are games which come and go regularly, and are governed by unwritten rules. _Football_ and _cricket_ are old games. Both games have altered very much. The marks of some old games, which were played with stones, are still to be seen in the cloisters at Westminster and Gloucester. (See cut on previous page.) CHAPTER XLVIII GOVERNMENT 1. There was not much change for many centuries in the way in which towns and villages were governed. 2. The borough towns, which gained their charters back in the days of King John, or King Henry III, had them confirmed by various kings in later times; but the powers of the towns were not much altered. The =corporation= of a borough was usually made up of men chosen by the freemen; but if the freemen did not admit many persons to the freedom of the borough, the power of electing, in the course of years, fell into the hands of a very few people. 3. This was what actually happened in a very large number of cases, and at the end of the eighteenth century there were many old boroughs which were governed by "close corporations"--the bulk of the people living in the borough having no voice in the management of the affairs of the town. All that was altered in the early part of the nineteenth century. Many of the old boroughs lost their privileges, as they had become such small unimportant places. All other boroughs now have regular elections of town councillors by the rate-payers each first of November. The councils elect the mayor on each 9th of November. 4. The =mayor=, and some of the inhabitants of the borough, are also magistrates and attend to police cases; while the =town council= looks after matters connected with sewers, lighting, paving, and cleansing the streets of the town. It has now also charge of educational affairs. 5. In London and large towns, where there is much =police-court business=, there are special magistrates who attend to nothing else. 6. In country places, for centuries, the =manor court= governed the manor; but gradually, and by Tudor times, most of the power of the manor court, or court leet as it was sometimes called, had passed into the hands of the =Vestry=. This consisted of the parish officers and rate-payers in the whole parish. It was called the Vestry, because its meeting-place was the vestry of the parish church, or even the church itself.