Amongst the numerous correspondents and readers of your very interesting
little work, there may yet be living some who were scholars in the above
institution during the last ten or fifteen years of the last century,
coevals, or nearly so, with Richards, afterwards of Oriel College,
author of a prize poem, _Aboriginal Britons_, and one of the Bampton
Lecturers; Middleton, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta; Trollope,
afterwards Master of the Grammar School; Barnes, afterwards connected
with the _Times_; Stevens, Scott (poor Scott!), Coleridge, Lamb, Allen,
White, Leigh Hunt, the two brothers Le G. Favell, Thompson, Franklin,
&c., pupils of old James Boyer, of flogging celebrity.
If so, can any of them furnish me with the words of an old song, then
current in the school, relating to the execution of the Earl of
Derwentwater in the rebellion of 1715, of which the four following lines
are all that I remember:
"There's fifty pounds in my right pocket,
To be given to the poor;
There's fifty pounds in my left pocket,
To be given from door to door."
Of another song, equally popular, less pathetic, but of more
spirit-stirring character, can any one supply the remainder?
"As our king lay musing on his bed,
He bethought himself once on a time
Of a tribute that was due from France,
That had not been paid for so long a time.
"Oh! then he called his trusty page,
His trusty page then called he,
Saying, 'You must go to the king of France,
To the king of France right speedily.'"