They smite a ball, stuffed very
hard with quills and covered with soale leather, with a staffe,
commonly made of withy, about 3 [feet] and a halfe long. Colerne-downe
is the place so famous and so frequented for stobball-playing. The
turfe is very fine, and the rock (freestone) is within an inch and a
halfe of the surface, which gives the ball so quick a rebound. A
stobball-ball is of about four inches diameter, and as hard as a
stone. I doe not heare that this game is used anywhere in England but
in this part of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire adjoining.
PART II.-CHAPTER XVI.
OF THE NUMBER OF ATTORNIES IN THIS COUNTIE NOW AND HERETOFORE.
[A STATUTE was passed in the reign of Edward I. which gave the first
authority to suitors in the courts of law to prosecute or defend by
attorney; and the number of attorneys afterwards increased so rapidly
that several statutes were passed in the reigns of Henry IV. Henry VI.
and Elizabeth, for limiting their number. One of these (33 Hen. VI. c.
7) states that not long before there were only six or eight attorneys
in Norfolk and Suffolk, and that their increase to twenty-four was to
the vexation and prejudice of those counties; and it therefore enacts
that for the future there shall be only six in Norfolk, six in
Suffolk, and two in Norwich. (Penny Cycle, art. Attorney.) Aubrey
adopts the inference that strife and dissension were promoted by the
increase of attorneys; which he accordingly laments as a serious evil.
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