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COPE

Volume 5 · 112 words · 1797 Edition

COPE is also the name of an ancient custom or tribute due to the king or lord of the soil, out of the lead-mines in some part of Derbyshire; of which Manlove faith thus:

Egrets and regrets to the king's highway, The miners have; and let cope they pay: The thirteenth dish of ore within their mine, To the lord, for lot, they pay at measuring time; Sixpence a load for cope the lord demands, And that is paid to the burgomaster's hands.

This word by doomsday-book, as Mr Hagar hath interpreted it, signifies a hill: and cope is taken for the supreme cover, as the cope of heaven.

COPEL. See CUPEL.