eijr Country.
A sale of goods, belonging to a Mr. Chatfield of Riverhead, near Sevenoaks, which had been seized for the payment of Church-rates, was advertised to take place a few days since; but all the auctioneers of the neighbourhood refused to officiate, and a person brought from a
distance for that purpose, was glad to escape from the incensed crowd collected with the avowed intention of preventing the sale. Accord- ingly, no sale could be effected.
Mr. Northend Nichol Hamerton, of Castle House, Rastrick, near Leeds, was killed on Thursday week, by the accidental discharge of his gun, when he was east on a rabbit-shooting excursion. The report of the gun was heard ; 8nd a gamekeeper who was in the neighbour- hood went in the direction whence the sound proceeded, and found Mr. Hamerton leaning on his bands and knees, and bleeding profusely. He was taken to Fixby Hall, where he died in three hours. The only ac- count he gave of the accident was, " I was charging my gun; when it went off." He had been married only three weeks.
As Captain Keats, R.N., nephew of Sir Richard Keats, Governor of Greenwich Hospital, was sailing in an open boat in Batticombe Bay, Devonshire, on Saturday last, a squall off the land took her so sud- denly, that before the sheet could be cast off she capsized, and sunk. There were Mrs. Keats and two of her sisters, Miss Diana and Miss Louisa Pitman, and a boatman, also in the boat. Captain Keats in- stantly laid hold of Miss Louisa, and swain with her a considerable dis- tance towards the shore, till a Preventive Service boat put off and rescued them both ; when he learnt the melancholy fact that his wife and her sister Diana were both lost, tog-ethec with the boatman. The body of Mrs. Keats and that of her sister were found entangled in the gear of the boat.
Information has been received at Liverpool of the destruction of two vessels, the Harvest Home of Newcastle, and the Lady of the Lake of Aberdeen, by the ice, about four hundred miles north of Newfound- land. From 160 to 170 persons, principally passengers, are said to have perished in the Lady of the Lake, which was bound for Quebec from Belfast.
A fire broke out on Wednesday morning, in the but of a fisherman in the village of Lympston, near Exeter. The sparks were blown by a strong wind on the thatched roofs of the adjoining houses, which were soon blazing. Engines were brought with little delay to the spot ; but, owing to the inflammable nature of the materials of which the houses were built, little good was effected by them, and the fire was not extinguished till fifty-eight dwellings had been burnt to the ground. A subscription, amounting to 1201., was raised at a meeting of the neighbouring gentry, on the same day, for the relief of the sufferers. The number of persons rendered houseless by this calamity is 248, nearly 1C0 of whom are totally destitute.
Horse-stealing was seldom, if ever, more prevalent than at present ; not being confined to any particular district, but extending more or less over every part of the kingdom.
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