Zbe 13robincts.
At the weekly meeting of the Heads of Houses in Oxford University, on Mon- day, a requisition, signed by 442 members of Convocation, calling upon the Board to condemn the celebrated No. 90 of the Tracts for the Times, was taken into consideration. A motion was made to take the requisition into consideratiosa that day six months. A debate of seven hours finished with an adjournment to Wednesday; when the Board agreed, by sixteen to eight, to a decree declaring that the forms of interpretation of the Thirty-nine Articles suggested in the Tract, " evading rather than explaining the sense of the Thirty-nine Articles, and reconciling subscription to them with the adoption of errors which they were de- signed to counteract, defeat the object and are inconsistent with the due ob- servance" of the statutes on the subject.
Falmouth is added to the list of parishes torn by Church dissensions, and it appears to have been so for a long time; but there us in the case the peculiarity that the innovator is an absentee. "A little more than two years ago,' says the "own correspondent" of the Times, who seems to be snaking a tour in the dis- turbed district, "the Reverend W. J. Coope, the Rector of the parish, sanctioned and introduced various changes in the accustomed form of worship, savouring, as the people thought, of senseless superstitions. The vestry, for the accommodation of the clergyman, was removed to an inconvenient nook at the extreme West of time church, in order that he might advance with greater parade up the middle aisle to the East, or communion-table. A small tap was introduced into the font, to ran off the baptismal water on the ground without its being touched or lided out; the clergyman considering it consecrated and holy, and improper to be carried, away for any purpose. Marriages were partly performed in the centre of the church, where the aisles cross each other. The reading-desk was taken away, and a ' faldstool ' and 'lectern' substituted. Part of the prayers were read by the clergyman with his face to the communion-table and his back to the people. Large crosses were embroidered in gold on the velvet coverings of the lectern and pulpit. The surplice was used in the pulpit. A couple of gilt candlesticks were displayed on the communion-rails. Half the service was chanted. The weekly offertory was adopted. These various changes were not unobserved or quietly ac- quiesced in. The parishioners met; and a memorial, some two years ago, was signed by about two hundred and seventy of the most respectable heads of families and presented to the diocesan, praying him to order a return to the mode of wor- ship they had been accustomed to. The reply to this was evasiVe and unsatisfac- tory; and the parish has gone on dissatisfied and squabbling with its clergy to the present day. Having established these changes, the reverend Rector ap- pointed the Reverend John Symonds as his Curate, directing him to carry out and persist in all the changes thus introduced; and then betook himself to Florence, where for the last two years he has resided, away from his parish and the strife he has raised." There has recently been a correspondence between the Curate, the parishioners, and the Bishop of Exeter. The Bishop declines to interfere with the discretion of the Curate, further than he has done by the withdrawal of the positive order to wear the surplice in preaching, and by giving Mr. Symonds ad- vice to discontinue the weekly offertory. The weekly offertory, therefore, is dis- continued; but for further alterations Mr. Symonds feels bound to await orders from his Rector.
At the annual meeting of the York Diocesan National Education Society, on the 29th January, Lord 3Iorpeth, who presided, spoke at some length on the ne- cessity of providing education for all classes; making particular allusion to the farmers of the East and North Riding of Yorkshire, as being quite unprovided with places to which they could easily send their sons for instruction adapted to them. He had, however, reason to know, that if there could be reliance that a sufficient number of that class would send their sons to an establishment espe- cially designed for their benefit, and situate on the confines of the two Ridings, funds for the purpose would be forthcoming from the gentry and clergy. This statementseemed to be very well received by the meeting.
A public meeting was held at Aylesbury, on Monday, to petition Parliament for repeal of the Game-laws. It was numerously and respectably attended. Dr. Lee, of Hartwell, presided; mind in his introductory speech he put together mummy of the current facts that tell against the laws. In ten years ending with 1843, 41 game- keepers lost their lives; and in that year 119 persons were convicted of offences against the Game-laws, either at the Quarter or Petty Sessions in Buckingham. Recently, a foreign custom has been adopted, to which they dare not give an English name—the battue; of which there was a most brutal and heartless instance lately in Buckinghamshire. The parties first went to chapel to say prayers, at nine o'clock, and at ten they were ready for the battue. The massacre was then perpetrated by eight or ten men styled noble; and to wind up all, when it was over, the band played "See the conquering hero comes" as they returned. Among the speakers were three farmers; one of whom, Mr. Scrivener, pronounced the Game-laws to be so bad that it is impossible to amend them, and therefore they must be got rid of altogether. A petition citing some arguments against the laws, and praying for their entire and immediate repeal, was adopted unanimously; and Mr. Bright was requested to present it to the House of Commons. Mr. Bright promised to do so, in a brief and effective speech. He remarked, that in 1843 no fewer than 4,500 men were convicted of poaching in England and Wales. A large number of them were sent to prison because they could not pay the fines. It waa equally certain that many of them came out not simply Poachers as they went in, but hardened and deeply-injured persons, by containination with men of bad, character, felons of every class. In 26 cases out of the 41 gamekeepers killed? a$ mentioned by the Chairman, the Coroner's Jury bad returned a verdict of wilful murder. Not only had 26 men lost their lives, but 26 murderers bad been made. Was not that an appalling state of things ? And all for the sake of providing a
miserable gratification to a very small portion of the public. Observing that the farmer dares not on his own land set foot on a nest of game or pick up a half- dead hare, he exhorted the farmer to search into the cause of his degradation. He hoped the attention of the Legislature would be drawn to the subject; for of late he had reason to think that the men who composed the Legislature were much improved in tone, and that a greater regard to public opinion than heretofore was paid by both Houses of Parliament. In acknowledging the usual compliment at the close, the Chairman said, he believed that two-thirds of the gentlemen who eat on the Magistrates' bench had been guilty of poaching when young, and there- fore he was surprised at the severity with which they treated poachers.
Sir Thomas Hare has given directions that the game on his estate at Stowe, near Downham, Norfolk, should be shot down as close as possible. This deter- mination, we believe, has arisen in consequence of the numerous complaints he has received of the injury done to the crops of his tenants. A gentleman near this city, who hired an estate last year in this county for sporting, and where he had reared a large head of game, had this week an account of 2001. presented to him for ,payment for damage done by the hares and rabbits to the tenants' crops-14 orzoich Mercury.
J. H. Hippisley, Esq., has given directions that all the game in his extensive preserves at Postbury, near Cretliton, shall be destroyed, seeing the great injury that arises to the fanner from the preservation of game.—Deconport Independent.
We are informed that Mr. John liorncastle, a tenant of the Earl of Essex, who recently addressed some letters to the county paper in reply to communications from Ins noble landlord in favour of game-preserving, received notice to quit his farm shortly after the appearance of the letters alluded to. The farmers and others of the neighbourhood have, under these circumstances, commenced a sub- scription for the purpose of presenting Mr. Horneastle with a testimonial of their esteem and their approval of his conduct—Hertford Reformer.
The Preston Chronicle says that a great many persons have purchased pro- perty in Lancashire to qualify themselves as County voters; and that in Preston alone 400 names will be added to the list of voters for North Lancashire.
A woman is in custody at Lammonby, near Penrith in Cumberland, charged with the murder of a daughter nine years old, perpetrated with the most revolting inhumanity. The woman i8 a drunkard, and the child had frequently told the father of her drinking in his absence. On the afternoon of Wednesday week, "she undressed the child to its shift, and having first hidden the clothes in a closet in the house, made a large fire; and then took the girl by the legs, held her over the fire with her face downwards, and laid her on the top grate-bar until the poor child's flesh was literally all burnt off its face, and death terminated its suf- ferings. She then, it appears, took the child off the fire, and called in at a neighbour's house, with a story that the child had been left in the house along with her little sister, and its clothing having caught fire it had been burnt to death during her absence at a farm-house about two miles from Lammonby." Her story was disproved, however, by another daughter, in whose presence she cona- -mitted the dreadful crime.
Two children have been poisoned with arsenic, at Thatcham, near Newbury, in Berkshire. The father is in custody for the crime.
Mr. John Williams, the proprietor of a boys' boarding-school at Chatham, has teen committed to Maidstone Gaol for trial for abominable conduct towards his Mr. Woolley, a paperhanger at Birmingham, has been suffocated in a cellar, by :carbonic acid gas arising from a tub of paint, the lid of which he took off.
. The inquest on the bodies of the three men killed by the explosion of a locomo- tive engine, near Manchester, was resumed on Tuesday. Mr. Fairbairn, the maker of the engine, was examined. He was of opinion that the ex-plosion was owing to the top of the fire-box being forced down by excessive pressure, from the accumu- lated force of steam which had no outlet; and that it was the boiling water and vapour at a high temperature cast upon the glowing embers and mixed with the gases there, that had rendered the explosion so violent. A man had told him that the engine-driver had screwed down one of the valves, as he had not steam enough. -No man, however, could be found to admit that he had said this. Mr. Edward Bury, who is in charge of the engines on the London and Birmingham Railway, agreed with Mr. Fairbairn as to the cause of the accident. He said—" I can only conclude that the explosion has taken place from an injudicious pressure. Whe- ther the man had screwed his valve down or not we don't know; there is some- thing there we can't get at. I have no doubt it has been caused entirely by the pressure of the steam." Engine-drivers became very confident and foolhardy after a time. The engines on thellanchester and Leeds Railway are worked by con- tract, so that the men would endeavour to save firing by keeping the steam from escaping as much as possible. The Jury, after deliberating for six hours, re- turned the following verdict—" That, from the evidence brought before us, we have reason to suppose that the ordinary valve had been closed, to facilitate the pressure of the steam; and that, from some unknown cause, the lock-up safety- valve was impeded in its working. That it is the opinion of the Jury that there was a flaw in the copper plate and the upper part of the fire-box, arising from the contraction and expansion of the metals in its ordinary working, which led, under accumulated pressure, to the catastrophe by which A illiam Stones, George Mills, and William Alcock, met with their death. From these circumstances, the Jury lay a deodand on the engine of 5001."
A man was killed on the South-western Railway, on Monday afternoon, near Winchester. The down-train had arrived within a quarter of a mile of the station at Winchester, when the engine-driver observed a man walk on to the railway and throw himself across the rails. The train was stopped as speedily us possible, and the man was found lifeless. He proved to be one of the Hants Rural Constabulary, and was stationed on duty in the neighbourhood of Win- chester. He had made two previous attempts to get on the line, but was -driven away.. This looks like a suicide, but a Jury have returned a verdict of "Accidental Death."
An extensive loss of life has occurred in a coal-pit at Timsbury, a villa,ge about line miles South of Bath, by an eruption of water into the mine. One hundred men were at work at the time; but the greater number were drawn up the shaft, where a scene of great terror took place, as only a dozen could he taken up at once: four also escaped by an air-course; but ten were drowned, as they were working at a distance of a mile from the mouth of the pit when the water burst in. The water is supposed to have flowed from an old pit adjoining. A lace-factory at Lonton, a suburb of Nottingham, belonging to Mr. Peter Coxon, was utterly destroyed by fire, on Sunday morning. It 'nad recently been fitted up with new inachieery, and the leas ie very et/Mids.:treble. •
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