THE TALE OF THE WARDSTAFF

Can any of your antiquarian correspondents furnish further elucidation of the strange ceremony of the gathering of the Wardstaff (which was in old time one of the customs of the hundred of Ongar, in Essex) than are to be found in Morant's *History of Essex*, vol. i. p. 126.? from whence it was incorrectly copied in Blount's *Jocular Tenures* by Beckwith, 4to. ed. It has been also more correctly given by Sir Francis Palgrave, in his *Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth*, Part II. p. clvii., who justly styles it— "a strange and uncouth fragment of the earliest customs of the Teutons; i…