securitates pacis ante illam octavam diem forisfactas exceptis debitis Regi de ipsis aut de aliis ligeis nostris qui superstites existunt et de illis qui mortui sunt post coronationem nostram necnon computantibus in scaccario nostro vel alibi: necnon debitis Regi: debitis per recognitiones, estallamenta, assignationes, vel obligationes Regi solum aut conjunctim cum aliis personis, ut custumariis aut aliis officiariis quibuscunque factis ac insuper debitis computantibus, seu illis qui computaverint in scaccario, sicut Vicecomitibus, Eschetoribus et aliis officiariis qui Regi satisfecerint debitis et per eosdem debitores Regis non solutis. In cujus rei testimonium nos litteras nostras fieri fecimus patentes. Teste meipso apud Westmonasterium decimo die Junii anno Regni nostri tertio. : Per ipsum Regem, (10th June, 1415.) No. 10. STACPOLE. (Translation of the foregoing Charter.) HENRY, by the Grace of God King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland, to all his bailiffs and faithful men to whom the present letters shall come greeting. Know ye that we of our special grace and mere motion from reverence to God and by intention of charity have pardoned the Prior and Convent of Newstead, in Sherwood, in the county of Nottingham, the suit of our peace which pertains to us against them for all manner of treasons, murders, ravishments, rebellions, insurrections, felonies, conspiracies, trespasses, offences, neglects, extortions, misprisions, ignorances, concealments, and deceits, in anywise howsoever done or committed by them before the eighth day of December last past; murders by them after the nineteenth day of November last past, committed (if any), excepted, whereof they are indicted, arraigned, or appealed against, and also outlawries issued against them, if any, by occasion thereof. And we grant to them our firm peace for the same, provided that the same Prior and Convent be not forgers of our money and multipliers of our coinage, and washers of our gold and silver, and coiners with our coinage and clippers of our money, and common approvers and notorious robbers or felons who have made abjuration, and so only that they stand right in our court, if any one will to speak against them concerning the premises or any of them. And further of our more abundant grace, we have pardoned and released to the same Prior and Convent all manner of escapes of felons and fugitives, chattels of outlaws and felons, of themselves deo dands, wastes, obstructions, and all manner of articles destructions and trespasses of vert and venison, sale of woods within forests and without, and other things whatsoever before the said eighth day of December, within our kingdom of England, and parts of Wales whereof punishment should fall in charge by debt or by fine and redemption, or by any other pecuniary penalties, or by forfeiture of goods and chattels, or by imprisonment or amercement of counties, towns, or persons, or the renewal of the freeholds of those who have never trespassed, or of their heirs, executors, or occupiers, escheators, sheriffs, coroners, and all such others, and of all that can pertain to us against them for the causes aforesaid, the statutes of liveries, clothes, and caps, passed before the said eighth day of December notwithstanding. And also all manner of donation, alienation, - and purchases, made by them of lands and tenements held of us or our progenitors formerly kings of England in capite; and also alienations, donations, and purchases in Mortmain made and had without the royal licence and also all manner of instrusions and entrances into their inheritances in part or in the whole after the death of their ancestors made without due the same out of the king's hands before the same eighth day of December, together with the issues and profits thereof in the meantime received: and also we have pardoned and released to the aforesaid Prior and Convent all manner of fines, adjudged amerciaments, issues forfeited, reliefs, scutages, and all manner of debts, accounts, profits, arrears of farms and accounts, and also all manner of actions and demands, which we alone have or can have against them, or jointly with any other person or persons: and also outlawries issued against them for any of the causes abovesaid. And, moreover, we have pardoned and released to the same Prior and Convent all manner of penalties forfeited before the same eighth day of December before us or our council, chancellor, treasurer, or any of our judges for any cause, and all other penalties likewise forfeited by them as well to us as to our most dear father deceased, for any cause, before the same eighth day, and to be levied to our use, and all manner of securities forfeited for keeping the peace before the same eighth day, except debts due to the king, from them or any other our liege subjects who shall be surviving, and from those who have died since our coronation; and also accountants in our exchequer or elsewhere, and also debts due to the king, recognizances, mortgages, assignments, or obligations to the king alone, or jointly with other persons as customers, or other officers whomsoever; and moreover debts by accountants or those who shall have accounted in the exchequer as sheriffs, escheators, and other officers who have satisfied the king for debts and have not been paid by the same debtors of the king. In testimony whereof we have caused these our letters to be made patent, witness ourself, at Westminster, the tenth day of June, in the third year of our reign. By the King himself, STACPOLE. SITUATIONS OF IMMINENT PERIL. It is an odd property of the human mind to be more excited and affected by the narrative of a hair-breadth escape than by that of a positive calamity. To read in the morning's paper that Mrs. A. B., of whom we know nothing, has lost four children within a week, may produce a transient feeling of sympathy and commiseration. To find in another part of the same newspaper an account of a man falling head foremost from the roof of a house, whose life is miraculously saved by his grasping the drawing room balcony in his descent, excites a far more stirring and thrilling interest: yet the one was a case of irreparable misfortune, the other a mere instance of extraordinary good luck. It is not our business to analyse the rationale of these anomalies of the human mind, which clearly fall within the province of metaphysical inquiry. The following anecdote seems to furnish another problem in that branch of abstract science. A man, determined upon suicide, stood upon the parapet of the Pont Royal, at Paris, and was just on the point of taking the fatal leap, when his eye and ear were arrested by the angry challenge of a sentinel, who, pointing his musket at the man, peremptorily ordered him to come down, threatening at the same time to shoot him. It seemed easy and natural enough to avoid this new danger, by putting into instant execution the preconceived resolution of jumping into the Seine or it might be supposed, that a man who had made up his mind to be drowned, need not have evinced so marked a repugnance to the alternative of being shot. Strange however to relate, the word and action of the sentry produced such a reaction in the mind of the intended suicide, that instead of leaping into the river, he hastily scrambled down the bridge parapet, and ran home. The French have a word, "La chair de Poule," by which they express that sort of electric shudder which is apt to run through the frame at the recital of terrific perils, and marvellous escapes, and it is a feeling which, like the contagious terror produced by ghost stories upon the minds of a fire-side party, is not without charm. The following are a few situations of imminent hazard, that furnish in the opinion of the writer, much food for imagination's self-torture::The Landsend in Cornwall consists of a promontory covered with green sward, of which the granite cliffs present to the ever stormy sea that dashes against that coast, a grand and most precipitous rampart. The descent to the very brink of the cliffs is extremely steep, and is about a quarter of a mile in length from the high road to the sea. Some years back, a gentleman on horseback was run away with on this spot. Horse and rider were seen rushing down the green declivity with ungovernable speed, and the immediate destruction of both seemed inevitable, but on the very ledge of the precipice, the latter had the luck or dexterity to let himself fall on the turf, thus saving his life. The horse leaped into the sea, and the impress left on the sod by his hinder feet, about a yard from the brink of the precipice, has been preserved to this day, in commemoration of the event. A more fatal leap was that which many years ago gave the name of "the white mare" to Whiston Cliff, an abrupt precipice on the side of one of the Hambledon Hills in Yorkshire. An extensive tract of table land has been long used as a training-ground for race-horses, skirted on one side by the above mentioned cliff. A thorough-bred mare was being exercised there and ran away with her rider. Unable to control her course, or to let himself fall from the mare's back, his efforts to check the animal's speed, probably rendered her the more ungovernable. She leaped the precipice with her rider, and both were of course dashed to pieces. It is difficult to conceive a more horribly grand spectacle than that which must have been presented by that doomed horseman, on his runaway racer, taking the dreadful leap. A dizzy and fearful situation must have been that of Mr. Green, the aeronaut, at the moment he cut the rope which attached the luckless Mr. Cocking's parachute to the balloon. The latter, in his frail machine, was hurled to earth, and killed on the spot, while the balloon suddenly freed from so great an additional weight, shot upwards for about two miles, with such amazing velocity, that those in the car attached to it found themselves breathless and aghast. It must try the nerves of Mr. Green's aerial companions to behold him occasionally climbing outside his balloon, by means of the netting which encloses it, when a false step would precipitate him perhaps three miles to the earth, leaving them to a most indefinite fate. Some years ago, public curiosity was painfully excited in Rome, by the feats of two English gentlemen, vieing with each other in acts of temerity. One of them placed himself upon an arm of the cross which surmounts the cupola of St. Peter's. The other then mounted higher, and perched himself on the top of the cross; but not to be outdone, the former clambered up a conductor which is placed on the top of the cross, rising several feet above it, and so taper as to be undistinguishable by spectators from the earth, and placed his glove on its point. At that altitude, and clinging to an invisible rod, the adventurous climber appeared to the multitudes that thronged the great piazza in front of St. Peter's, as if he were soaring unsupported in mid air. A critical situation was that of an infant, which, in the absence of its nurse, was taken out of its cradle, at Gibraltar, by a baboon, and carried to the very edge of a lofty and precipitous rock, in which position the monkey, to the great consternation of numerous spectators, sat dangling the infant in imitation of its nurse. No attempt could be made to save the child, and could the animal have been reached, the probability is that he would have dropped the child in the endeavour to effect his own escape. When the feelings of the spectators had been wound up to the highest state of excitement and dread, the monkey was observed quietly to retrace its steps, and entering the window whence it had issued, to deposit the unconscious infant in its cradle. Perhaps none of the many callings exercised by mankind, present situations of more imminent hazard than the occupation pursued by the hardy islanders of the North Sea, who lowering themselves from their precipitous cliffs by means of a rope fastened round their waists, derive a livelihood from catching sea birds, of which myriads frequent those coasts, laying their eggs in fissures and cavities of the rock. The cliffs of the Faroe Islands vary in altitude from 1,000 to 1,500 feet, generally presenting a perpendicular face to the sea, which perpetually washes their base; and to behold human beings suspended by a frail cord, half way between earth and sea, must create a strange thrill in |