NOTES TO INTRODUCTION. xlvii Hackluyt of Yetton.-Richard Hackluyt, the author of English Voyages, Navigation, and Discoveries. Lond. 1598 -99, 1600, 3 vols. folio, and other geographical works, according to Wood, was of the family of Hackluyt of Yetton.-Wood's Athena:, vol. ii. p. 186. Page xiv. Post of Hereford, Leominster, Shrewsbury, or Ludlow, then recently esta- blished, &c. -See an interesting notice of the early history of the Post-office in the Gentleman's Magazine, Aug. 1853, p. 153. In a table appended to the Description and Use of two Arithmetical Instruments, &c. by S. Morland (Sir Samuel), Lond. 1673, is a notice " concerning letters which may be sent from London." Page xvi. A solemnday ofprayer, &c.-Numerous allusions to fasts occurr in these letters in Ember weeks, private days, &c. Sir Robert keeps a solemn day of prayer at Stanage Lodge, also a day preparatory to his entering on his parliamentary duties. The Ember days and monthly parliamentary fasts, the last Wednesday in the month, and special days, were strictly observed at Brampton. Instead of the last Wednesday the King, 5 Oct. 1643, ordered the second Friday in each month, to be so observed. The last Wednesday in December, 1644, falling on Christmas Day, and doubt having 'arisen with the divines whether that day should be observed as a fast-on the 19th Dec. it was ordered by the House of Commons so to be kept. The Royalists made a clamour against this as a great impiety and profaneness. The parliament-now to a man Presbyterian-taking the views of the Kirk, approved of it. Mr. Edmund Calamy, in his sermon before the House of Lords, on that day, says, " This day is commonly called Christmas Day, a day that has hitherto been much abused to superstition and profaneness. It is not easy to say whether the supersti- tion has been greater or the profaneness. I have known some that have preferred Christmas Day before the Lord's Day-some that would be sure to receive the Sacrament on Christmas Day, though they did not receive it all the year after-some thought, though they did not play at cards all the year, yet they must play at Christmas; thereby, it seems, to keep in memory the birth of Christ. This and much more had been the profaneness of this feast-and truly I think the superstition and profaneness of the day is so rooted into it-that there is no way to reform it, but by dealing with it as Hezekiah did with the Brazen serpent. This year, God, by His providence, has buried this feast in a fast, and I hope it will never rise again. You have sent out, right honorable, astrict order for keeping this day, and you are here to-day to observe your own order, and I hope you will do it strictly. The necessities of the times are great-never more need of prayer and fasting-the Lord give us grace to be humbled in this day of humiliation for all our own and England's sins, and especially for the old superstition and profaneness of this feast." -Neal's Hist. of the Puritans, by Toulmin, vol. iii. p. 156. In the letter from Lord Westmorland to Edward Harley in the Appendix, p. 215, there is, in a Latin Epigram, an allusion to this keeping of Christmas Day as a fast-fixing the year of that undated letter to be 1644. On the monthly fast days, the business of the House of Commons was usually voting
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