25 JANUARY 1930, Page 29

For the early history of the English Church Dr. Charles

Cotton's scholarly monograph on The Saxon Cathedral at Canterbury and the Saxon Saints Buried Therein (Manchester University Press, 10s. 6d.) is authoritative. The Church, founded by St. Augustine about the year 602 was burnt in 1067, but much is known or safely conjectured about its plan and structure, as Dr. Cotton shows. He devotes separate chapters to the seven sainted archbishops, whose tombs stood in the Saxon cathedral from St. Breogwine to St. Alphage whom the Danes martyred. St. Dunstan is the best known of the seven. Dr. Cotton digresses for a moment to say that Dunstan

" invented the system of putting pegs into the drinking pots, so that all might know how much a man had drunk ; a peg-tankard (Derbyshire) held two quarts ; the quantity between each peg was one gill (half a pint) Winchester measure, quite sufficient for one draught ; the act of taking a man down a peg or two ' was, there- fore, that of a sot, and to be avoided."

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