Well known sayings across England

Frog In your throat
Medieval physicians believed that the secretions of a frog could cure a cough if they were coated on the throat of the patient. The frog was placed in the mouth of the sufferer and remained there until the physician decided that the treatment was complete.
Mind your own beeswax
This came from the days when smallpox was a regular disfigurement. Fine ladies would fill in the pocks with beeswax. However when the weather was very warm the wax might melt. But it was not the thing to do for one lady to tell another that her makeup needed attention. Hence the sharp rebuke to "mind your own beeswax!"
Getting a square meal
The British war ships of the time of Nelson and Trafalga had square plates to fit the tables slung between the cannons below decks. So many sailors were from such poor and under nourished backgrounds they saw this as a "Square Meal" - meaning the only good one they had had.
Giving someone the cold shoulder
When a guests would over stay their welcome as house guests, the hosts would (instead of feeding them good, warm meals) give their too-long staying guests the worst part of the animal, not warmed, but the COLD SHOULDER.
Getting the short end of the stick
Wet your Whistle
I've herd this a few times, I don't actually know where it comes form or what it means. But I've always thought of it as a nice term "go on, have a drink"
I the Limelight (in the center or position of public attention)
In the days before electric lighting, theater stages were illuminated by the intense white light produced by heating lime in an oxyhydrogen flame. This was called limelight, as was the mechanism that produced it. A person who is said to be in or enjoy the limelight is therefore being compared to an actor on stage.
Beat around the bush
Game birds were scared out of their hiding places under bushes and then killed.
In the doghouse (In disgrace)
One commentator has said that on slave-ships the passengers were chained in the hold and the seamen slept in rough shelters on deck, known as doghouses because they were bare and uncomfortable. Another suggests that the expression originated with Peter Pan (1904) in which Mr Darling lives in the doghouse as a penance for his poor treatment of the dog, as a result of which the children run away. The first recorded date of the expression (1932) rules out the first of these explanations (the shelters may have been called doghouses but they had nothing to do with disgrace) and the American origin of the expression makes the second likely. There is really no need to look any further than the familiar idea of banishing a dog to its kennel in the event of misbehaviour.

Minding your Ps and Qs
Comment from Bill Kling: "Minding one's p's and q's" is a typesetter's admonition. When you handle individual character type slugs, you need to be careful of how you store and retrieve the p's and q's, because they look so much alike.
I've always been taught that it's just a shorthand way of saying 'mind your pleases and thank yous' -- something you tell your kids when they go off to spend the night at a friend's house so that they will be polite. Maybe this is a colloquial definition, because the pints and quarts thing sounds more like a general 'take care' kind of warning.
Saving face or losing face
The noble ladies and gentlemen of the late 1700s wore much makeup to impress each other. Since they rarely bathed, the makeup would get thicker and thicker. If they sat too close to the heat of the fireplace, the makeup would start to melt. If that happened, a servant would move the screen in front of the fireplace to block the heat, so they wouldn't "lose face."
Not fit to hold a candle to
A menial household task was holding a candle for someone while they completed some type of activity. Some people were not held in much esteem, therefore they were "not fit to hold a candle to."
Getting the bum's rush
A bum is/was a bum-bailiff, and "getting the bum's rush" was being helped on your way by a couple of officers.
Sleep tight
The cat's out of the bag
(a secret revealed) originates in medieval England when piglets were sold in the open marketplace. The seller usually kept the pig in a bag, so it would be easier for the buyer to take home. But some dishonourable sellers would try and trick their customers by putting a large cat in the bag instead. However, if a shrewd buyer looked in the bag - then the cat was literally out of the bag. This good advice was first recorded in London around 1530: “When ye proffer the pigge open the poke" Incidently the bag was called a poke, which is where the saying 'a pig in a poke,' also comes from, which literally means 'to buy something which you cannot see' and thus 'to buy something whose true nature is unknown'. Also refers to buying something you don't want (i.e. cat!).

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
A man is known by the company he keeps.
Laughter is the best medicine
Let sleeping dogs lie.
Like father like son
One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters (english proverb 17th century)
One good turn deserves another
Rats desert a sinking ship
The early bird catches the worm
The older the fiddler, the sweeter the tune.
There's no place like home
Things are not always what they seem
A stumble may prevent a fall.
As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.
Speak not of my debts unless you mean to pay them
Don't dig your grave with your knife and fork
The best throw of the dice is to throw them away
Hope for the best but prepare for the worst
Sometimes you must be cruel to be kind
Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.
Love your neighbor, yet pull not down your hedge
The ship that will not obey the helm will have to obey the rocks
You must not expect old heads upon youg shoulders
Poverty is not a shame, but the being ashamed of it is.
Still waters run deep
To talk with out talking is to shoot without aiming
It takes all sorts to make a world
Where there's a will,there's a way.
Two wrongs do not make a right.
A proverb is the child of experience