Devon Notes and Queries. 127 92. Plague Market, Merivale. — Mr. Spence Bate in 1872 offered an ingenious and distinctly convincing derivation of this name from the Cornish matas bal (tin market), trans- muted colloquially into moras vol (plague market). Apart from that, he also considered, with fair reason, that Merivale is not obviously suitable as site for such a market in relation to Tavistock. But he proceeds to add (referring to Rev. E. A. Bray's explanation, still popular), "there is nothing to show that the plague as an epidemic ever visited Tavistock.'* This seems a little hard on that painfully discredited Tavistock worthy, and ignores his definite statement that 522 plague- burials were registered at Tavistock in 1625. What was the population of Tavistock at that period, and when does the designation «* Plague Market " first occur in local literature ? T. A. Falcon. 93. Crownland. — In Lord Avebury's Scenery of England the reader is taken through millions of years, beginning with the nebulous times when the sun and the whole planetary system existed in gaseous form, through the period of their consolidation into globes, down to the times when the slowly -contracting sur- face of our earth formed itself into wrinkles, upon which climate heat and cold, sunshine and moisture, and gases of all kinds exercised their erosive action and deposited the various strata which now form the envelope of the earth's crust. When Lord Avebury towards the end leaves pre-historic for historic times, we find it more difficult to follow him. The land of England in Saxon times was either folkland or booMand. A third category, that of Crownland, is here added, but we are not told how Crownland is to be distinguished from folkland. It is a pity, too, that in discussing gavelkind, the writer, like so many others, does not tell us that gavelkind and borough English are manorial customs which apply only to village- lands, t.^., to one portion of the dependent lands held under a manor and never to manors themselves or freeholds of a manor. They are not, therefore, land-laws of England, but simply customs affecting manorial tenants. O.R. 94. Crest of the Morices of Werrington (II, p. 39). — I find I have made a clerical error ; I should have said there are now no armorial bearings to be seen of the family either in the house or church of St. Martin, Werrington.
