STRAY NOTES, PREHISTORIC, SAXON, AND NORMAN. 231
Mussalman Coolies in our West India sugar plantations, wherein the
model of a Tomb is carried about from place to place with great
pomp and ceremony, and, whenever stationary, a fight taking place,
ending in the precipitation of the Tazia or Tomb (like the Ward-
staffe) either into the sea or some other watercourse; a play well
known in India as commemorating a memorable defeat and a
martyr's death, both of which find an important place in Muham-
madan annals.
John Rouse, quoted by Strutt, says that Hock-Tuesday was dis-
tinguished by various sportive pastimes, in which the townspeople,
divided into parties, were accustomed to draw each other with ropes.
Spelman speaks of men and women binding each other, and
especially the women the men, and Cowel of the men hocking the
women on Monday and the women the men on Tuesday.
Three origins for this Hock-tide custom have been suggested by
Mr. Denne in the 7th volume of the "Archaeologia" (from which,
indeed, Strutt gained most of his information on the subject), viz.
(1) the remains of heathen customs introduced by the Romans and
afterwards kept up by the Saxons ; (2) the defeat of the Danes by
the English, a.d. 1002; and (3) the death of Hardicanute in 1041,
by which England was finally delivered from the Danes.
The records, then, all more or less agree in assigning the origin
of Hock-tide to Saxon times and the ceremony of The Cutting or
Tallying of the Wardstaffe to the same period.
In Navestock, as we have already noticed, the ceremony took
place at "Three Wants Lane," a spot which up to the present I have
been unable to identify with any degree of certainty.
One other fact in connection with the Wardstaffe remains to be
noted, and that is the place to which such staffe was wont to be
carried, presumably to the most important Manor House in the
district. Now, so far back as the records carry us, that would be
Navestock Manor. But we find that the Wardstaffe, as a matter of
fact, was lodged with the Lord of the Manor of Loft Hall, the site
of which is now represented by the farmhouse situated upon our
Heath, and known as "Loft Hall." This house, as I am informed
by Mr. Pratt of Loft Hall, is still bounded if not surrounded by the
remains of an ancient moat.
I am not at present in a position to quote any earlier reference
to Loft Hall than the year 1356, when James de Barwe released to
Master John Barnet, Canon of St. Paul's, all his right in certain