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Superstitions: Bargrave

In the "Mercurius Rusticus" is the following entry:--"Among other things valuable for rarity and use, the rebels took from Mr. Bartlett a cock-eagle's stone, for which thirty pieces had been offered by a physician." In the curious catalogue of Dr. Bargrave's Museum (seventeenth century), printed by the Camden Society, is mentioned the Aetites, Lapis aquilaris, or the eaglestone "which I bought of an Armenian at Rome. They differ sometimes in colour. This is a kind of a rough, dark, sandy colour, and of the bigness of a good wallnut. It is rare and of good value, because of its excellent qualities and use, which is by applying it to child-bearing women, and to keep them from miscarriages. It is so useful that my wife can seldom keep it at home, and therefore she hath sewed the strings to the knitt-purse in which the stone is, for the convenience of the tying of it to the patient on occasion; and hath a box, she hath, to put the purse and stone in. It were fitt that either the dean's, or vice-dean's wife (if they were marryed men) should have this stone in their custody for the public good as to neighbourhood; but still, that they have a great care into whose hands it be committed, and that the midwives have a care of it, so that it still be the Cathedral Church's stone."