Natural History of Selborne, marked the limit
or end of the plestor, playstow, or play-place
for the children of the village. The gospel oak
at Stoneleigh in Warwickshire, standing in a
little retired coppice, marks the boundary
between the parishes of Stoneleigh and
Bagginton. A whole forest of such trees must have
been seen by most readers of topographical
literature. There are some lines by George
Withers, written towards the close of the reign
of Charles the First, which touch upon this
subject:

That ev'ry man might keep his own possessions,
Our fathers used, in reverend processions,
With zealous pray'rs and with praiseful cheere,
To walke their parish boundes once a yeare,
And well knowne markes (which sacriligeous hands
Now cut or brake) so border'd out their lande,
That ev'ry one distinctly knew his owne,
And many brawles, now rife, were then unknowne.

The "sacriligeous hands" were the moody,
gloomy iconoclasts of the Puritan body.
Herrick, in his "Hesperides," with a distinct
allusion to the Holy Oak or Gospel Tree as a
permanent landmark to define the boundaries of
parishes or other local divisions, says:

                     Dearest, bury me
Under that Holy Oke or Gospel Tree;
Where (tho' thou seest not) thou may'st think upon
Me, when thou yeerly go'st procession.

Certain collateral speculations were put
forward by the late Sir Henry Ellis, who, in his
Notes to Brand's Popular Antiquities, made
the following comments: "The procession-
days or gang-days not only brought to the
recollection of Englishmen the settlement of the
Christian fathers on the soil, but they also
impressed on the memory correct notions
concerning the origin and nature of proprietorship
in land. These religious processions marked
out the limits of certain portions of land, under
which the whole kingdom was contained; and
in all these the principle of God's fee was
recognised by the law of the people. The
primitiæ, or cyric scot or church-rate, is
admitted as due throughout the bounds, and
the tithes also, as charges on the parish;
but, together with those admissions, there is
formed in the mind a mental boundary; and a
sacred restraint is placed upon the consciences
of men, that commingles religious awe with
the institution of landed right and landed
inheritance, and family succession to it."

Some of the ceremonies connected with
perambulation or beating the bounds have
more of oddity than solemnity about them. It
is said that some time ago, at Newcastle-on-
Tyne, once every three years, the chief
commissioner of the Tyne was wont to catch hold
of the first pretty maiden he encountered on
the banks of the Tyne, on the morning of the
ceremony, and give her a kiss, a guinea, and a
glass of wine—which, it is alleged, induced some
of the maidens to put themselves in the way of
being so captured.

As to the beating of parish boundaries, it is
chiefly a memory of the past. It used to be
a glorious sight to see Bumble the beadle,
with his retinue of leather-legged and muffin-
capp'd charity boys, trudging through the streets,
and banging away with their wands at any stones
or inscriptions which denoted a parish boundary.
There are some odd stories afloat about
these perambulations. The Book of Days states
that, in some districts, the parish authorities
insisted on walking along the whole boundary-
line. If a canal had been cut through the
boundary, it was deemed necessary that some
of the parishioners should pass through the
water. Where a river formed part of the
boundary-line, the procession either passed
along it in boats, or some of the party stripped
and swam along it, or boys were thrown into
it at customary places. If a house had been
erected on the boundary-line, the procession
claimed the right to pass through it. A house
in Buckinghamshire, still existing, has an oven
through which the boundary-line passes; it
was customary in the perambulations to put a
boy into this recess, to preserve the integrity
of the boundary-line. This was considered a
good joke by the village lads, who became
ambitious of the honour, and were wont to cast
lots who should creep into the oven. Once
the good wife had a fire in the oven at the
critical moment; Tom Smith, the allotted hero,
naturally objected to avail himself of the honour
under those particular circumstances; the matter
was compromised by his crawling over the roof of
the oven instead of getting into it. About the
beginning of the present century, when a
procession of churchwardens, overseers, and
charity boys was perambulating the parish
of St. George, Hanover-square, they came to a
part of a street where a nobleman's coach
was standing across the boundary-line. The
carriage was empty, waiting for the owner, who
had gone into an adjoining house. The
principal churchwarden desired the coachman to
drive out of their way. "I won't," said he;
"my lord told me to wait here, and here I'll
wait." Whereupon the churchwarden coolly
opened the carriage door, entered, passed out
at the opposite door, and was followed by the
whole procession. A writer in the work last
named, says: "The last perambulation I
witnessed was in 1818, at a small village in
Derbyshire. It was of rather degenerate
character. There was no clergyman present,
nor anything of a religious nature in the
proceedings. The very name processioning
had been transmuted (and not inaptly) into
possessioning. The constable, with a few
labourers and a crowd of boys, constituted
the procession, if such an irregular company
could be so called. An axe, a mattock, and an
iron crow were carried by the labourers, for
the purpose of demolishing any building or
fence which had been raised without permission
on the waste ground, or for which the
acknowledgment to the lord of the manor had not
been paid. At a small hamlet, rejoicing in the
name of Wicked Nook, some unfortunate