Ruthin.
_The Whetstone_ (Vol. vii., p. 208.).--In your No. 174. of "N. & Q.," E. G.
R. alludes to the _Game of the Whetstone_. The following quotation, as
bearing on that subject, may not be uninteresting to your readers:
"In the fourth year of this king's (Edward VI.) reign, in the month of
September, one Grig, a poulterer of Surrey (taken among the people for
a prophet, in curing of divers diseases by words and prayers, and
saying he would take no money), was, by command of the Earl of Warwick,
and others of the Council, set on a scaffold in the town of Croidon, in
Surrey, with a paper on his breast, wherein was written his deceitful
and hypocritical dealings: and after that, on the eighth of September,
set on a pillory in Southwark, being then Our Lady Fair there kept; and
the Mayor of London, with his brethren the aldermen, riding through the
fair, the said Grig asked them and all the citizens forgiveness.
"'Of the like counterfeit physicians,' saith Stow, 'I have noted, in
the summary of my _Chronicles_ (anno 1382), to be set on horseback, his
face to the horse-tail, the same tail in his hand as a bridle, a collar
of jordans about his neck, a _whetstone_ on his breast; and so led
through the city of London, with ringing of basons, and banished.'
"Whereunto I had added (with the forementioned author) as
followeth:--Such deceivers, no doubt, are many who, being never trained
up in reading or practice of physicke and chirurgery, do boast to doe
great cures, especially upon women; as to make them straight that
before were crooked, corbed, or cramped in any part of their bodies,
&c. But the contrary is true; for some have received gold, when they
have better deserved the whetstone."--Goodall's _Royal College of
Physicians_: London, 1684, p. 306.