XXVII. NATALE SOLUM DULCEDINE, ETC.

I MUST confess myself born in Northamptonshire, and if that worthy county esteem me no disgrace to it, I esteem it an honour to me. The English of the common people therein (lying in the very heart of the land) is generally very good.

And yet they have an odd phrase not so usual in other places.

They used to say, when at cudgel plays (such 214tame were far better than our wild battles) one gave his adversary such a sound blow as that he knew not whether to stand or to fall, that he settled him at a blow.

The relics and stump (my pen dares write no worse) of the Long Parliament pretended they would settle the church and state; but surely had they continued, it had been done in the dialect of Northamptonshire; they would so have settled us, we should neither have known how to have stood, or on which side to have fallen.