Volume 4 — Notes.

COLLAR OF SS. (Vol. ii., pp. 89. 475.)

No less than nine long months have elapsed since you adopted my suggestion of limiting your columns, on the disputed question relative to the collar of SS., to a record of the names of those persons who, either on the monumental effigies or brasses, or in their portraits or otherwise, are represented as wearing that ornament; together with a short statement of the position held by each of these individuals in the court of the then reigning monarch, seeming to warrant the assumption. How is it that the invitation has not produced more than a single response? Is it that the combatants are more fond of discussing the probabilities of a disputed point, than of seeking for facts to aid in its illustration? I hope that this is not so, in an age that prides itself in its antiquarian and historical investigations; and I trust that, now the dismissal of the parliament has relieved many from onerous duties, your pages may benefit, not only on this but on other important subjects, by the vacational leisure of your learned contributors.

That I may not myself be chargeable with a continuance of the silence of which I complain, I now offer to you no less than eleven of the earliest names, principally taken from Boutell's Monumental Brasses, but some suggested in your own pages, on whose monuments or otherwise the collar occurs. To most of these I have added a few particulars seeming to warrant the assumption; and I doubt not that some of your correspondents will supply you with similar hints as to those of whom I have as yet been unable to trace anything applicable to the subject of enquiry.

1. The first of these is in 1382, seventeen years before the accession of Henry IV. It appears on the brass of Sir Thomas Burton, in Little Castreton Church, in Rutlandshire. This knight, we find, received letters of protection on accompanying the Duke of Lancaster to France in 1369, when Edward III. revived his claim to that kingdom. [1] Being thus one of the retainers of the duke, the assumption of his collar of livery may be at once accounted for.

2. The next that we have is on the monument of John Gower in the church of St. Saviour, Southwark. The poet died in 1402, 4 Henry IV. It is more than doubtful whether he was a knight, and the only ground that I can suggest for his being represented with the collar of SS. is, that he was in some manner, perhaps as the court poet, attached to the household of the king. Of his transferred devotion to Henry IV. we have sufficient evidence in the revision of his Confessio Amantis, from which he excluded all that he had previously said in praise of his patron Richard II.

3. Sir Thomas Massingberd died in 1406, and on his monument in Gunby Church in Lincolnshire, both he and his lady are represented with collars of SS. Why, I have still to seek.

4. In 1407 there is a similar instance of a knight and his lady being so ornamented. These are Sir William and Lady Bagot, whose monument is in Baginton Chruch, Warwickshire. Boutell says that he was the first who received this decoration from the king. Be this as it may, the Patent Rolls contain sufficient to account for his and his wife's assuming King Henry's livery from gratitude for the restoration of his land, which he had forfeited as an adherent to Richard II. [2]

5. Then follows Sir John Drayton, whose monument, dated in 1411, is in Dorchester Church, Oxfordshire. It may be presumed that he was in the king's household; as in the beginning of the reign of Richard II. he was keeper of the royal swans; and early in that of Henry IV., was serjeant of the king's pavilions and tents. Thomas Drayton, who was made Assayer of the Mint in the year of Sir John's death, [3] was probably his son.

6. In the following year, 1412, we have the collar of SS. represented on the brass of Sir Thomas Swynborne in Little Horkeley Church, Essex. Two or three years before, and perhaps at the time of his death, the knight held the offices of Mayor of Bordeaux, and of the king's lieutenant in those parts.

The last five of these are in the reign of Henry IV. In the reign of Henry V., I am not aware of any examples; but in that of Henry VI., we find five other instances.

7. In Trotton Church, Sussex, is the monument of Thomas Lord Camoys, who died in 1424, and of his wife; both of whom are distinguished by the collar. He was a Knight of the Garter, and commanded the left wing of the English army at the battle of Agincourt.

8. A monument, supposed to be that of Sir John Segrave, dated in 1425, occurs in Dorchester Church, Oxfordshire: of whom I can state nothing.

9. On the brass of John Leventhorpe, Esq., in the church of Sawbridgeworth, in Hertfordshire, the collar is also to be found. He died in 1433, and was one of the executors named in the will of King Henry IV. [4]

10. The monument in Yatton Church, Somersetshire, representing a judge in his robes, is traditionally ascribed to Sir Richard Newton, who died Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1449. This is, I believe, the first example of a judge being represented with the collar of SS.

11. The silver collars of the king's livery bequeathed by the will of John Baret of Bury, may be presumed, although he did not die till after the accession of Edward IV., to be of the livery of Henry VI.; as he is not only represented on his tomb, which he had erected during Henry's reign, with the collar of SS.; but the chantry, also built by him, is profusely ornamented with the same collar, enclosing his monogram J. B. He probably received the privilege of wearing it during Henry's visit to St. Edmondsbury in 1433. [5]

I shall be glad to see a continuation of this list carried on through subsequent reigns, since it is only by the multiplication of examples that we shall be enabled to form a more correct conclusion on the various questions connected with this interesting subject.

Will one of your correspondents kindly inform me where it appears that Richard II. ever wore the collar of SS.?

EDWARD FOSS.

PRINTING.

This art cannot be assigned to any single year, but must rather be referred to a decennium; and the one in which we now are (1851—1860), is certainly the first decennium of the fifth century of the existence of the art. If anything were proposed in the way of celebration of this anniversary, probably the year 1855 would be chosen, not only as the year which touches the middle of the decennium, but as being very probably the year in which the printing of the Bible was completed. We have then a year or two to consider in what manner the spirit which anniversaries usually call up shall be turned to account. The following will probably be suggested.

A feed. If we could call down Fust and Gutenberg to witness that within twelve hours after dessert and commonplaces are finished, an account of the dinner, as long as three epistles of St. Paul, would be about the world in something like a hundred thousand copies, such a celebration would have a strong point of interest about it.

A monument in sculpture. That is to say, a lame subscription, a committee, five-and-twenty abusive paragraphs before the thing is done, one more when, ten years after, it is completed, and a short notice in the handbooks of London in all time to come.

If these two modes are abandoned, many others would be proposed. Mine would be, a subscription to defray the expense of publishing, on a large scale, a book of fac-similes of early typography, to be sold at a cheap rate, with such prefatory matter as would form an accurate popular history of printing from 1450 to 1550. The great interest with which I saw plain working men looking at the treasures now exhibited in glass cases at the British Museum, made me think of this.

Reference is frequently made upon the origin of printing, to the fasciculus temporum, or Cologne Chronicle. In one place I find a citation in support of the Gutenberg Bible having been commenced in 1450; in another citation it is only affirmed that printing was first done in that year. The only edition I have the means of consulting at this moment is that of Ratdolt, 1484. And here I find nothing about printing except that, of the year 1457 and thereabouts, it is said that

"Artifices mira celeritate subtiliores solito fiunt. Et impressores librorum multiplicant in terra."

In the preface Ratdolt says that he had printed the fasciculus three times already, of which Hain mentions two. He says, moreover, that this fourth (Venice) edition was cura et opera diligentiori. Did Ratdolt, after inquiry, abandon the more specific account above cited, and content himself with the above sentence, as expressing all that could be verified; or, as I have sometimes supposed, do different books circulate under the title of fasciculus temporum? Be this as it may, Ratdolt expressly refers to the great impulse which the mechanical arts in general received just about the time when printing became common. Now we may hope the same thing of the decennium on which we are entering, the beginning of which is made conspicuous by the great forcing-house of art, which has not yet got the name it is to keep.

M.

FOLK LORE.

Bible divination in Suffolk.

—In Suffolk it is a practice on New Year's Eve to open a Bible at midnight, and the passage upon which they stick a pin will be the luck (good or bad) that attends them the following year.

R. J. S.

Mode of Discovering the Bodies of the Drowned.

—What must we think of the following, transcribed from the Gentleman's Mag., vol. xxxvii. p. 189.? Can such things be?

"WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 1767.

"An inquisition was taken at Newbery, Berks, on the body of a child near two years old, who fell into the river Kennet, and was drowned. The jury brought in their verdict accidental death. The body was discovered by a very singular experiment, which was as follows:—After diligent search had been made in the river for the child, to no purpose, a two-penny loaf, with a quantity of quicksilver put into it, was set floating from the place where the child it was supposed had fallen in, which steered its course down the river upwards of half a mile, before a great number of spectators, when the body happening to lay on the contrary side of the river, the loaf suddenly tacked about, and swam across the river, and gradually sunk near the child, when both the child and loaf were immediately brought up, with grabbers ready for that purpose."

Is this experiment ever tried at the present time, and do there exist any authentic accounts of such trials and their results?

* & ?

Manpadt House.

Somersetshire Rhyme.—In Vol. iii., p. 206., there is mention of a traditional rhyme on Lynn and Rising. At Taunton, in Somersetshire, there is a similar tradition current:

This Nertown is a village adjoining Taunton, and lying on the north side of it. Its name is variously regarded as a corruption of Northtown Near-town, and Nethertown, of which the last is doubtless the right derivation.

R. D. H.

DICTIONARY OF HACKNEYED QUOTATIONS.

Allow me to suggest the publication of a small work, which might be entitled "The Book of Hackneyed Quotations." Manifold would be its usefulness. Here information would be imparted to enquirers anxious to discover the source of such passages and the labours of other oracles, as well as of the editor of "NOTES AND QUERIES," would be thus in this department diminished. Reporters would by this means be enabled to correct mistakes; for, owing either to blunders in the delivery, or errors in the short-hand notes, rarely are quotations faithfully printed. The gentleman "totally unaccustomed to public speaking," and the orator of "unadorned eloquence," might from hence cull some flowers wherewith to embellish their speeches while to the practised author and the accomplished speaker such a collection might serve as an index expurgatorius, teaching them what to avoid as common-place, and so the recurrence of old friends, "familiar in our mouths as household words," would be more "like angels' visits, few and far between."

An index referring to the rhyming or important words should be appended, and it would be advisable to subjoin translation of the few Latin and French citations.

Surely it is "devoutly to be wished" that the proposed little work may find "a local habitation and a name," and that the idea may not vanish into thin air "like the baseless fabric of a vision." No doubt several of your correspondents who do not think that "ignorance is bliss," and that it is "folly to be wise," would gladly lend their aid, and the constant "cry" would be "they come." As to the title, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet:" but "somewhat too much of this."

TT.

Minor Notes.

Cocker's Arithmetic.

—I have a copy of Cocker's Arithmetic, the 37th edition, 1720, with an engraved portrait of the author; respecting which there is the following manuscript note on the flyleaf:—

"Mr. Douce, of Bath, the literary antiquary and book-collector, showed me a copy of Cocker's Arithmetic, with the frontispiece cut of the author, which he said was very scarce.

"J. P., April, 1823."

Mr. Douce's copy (the first edition, 1678) is now in the possession of Mr. Rainy, an upholsterer in Bath, and is for sale. He asks 8l. 10s. for it.

CRANMORE.

The Duke of Normandy.

—The question relative to the late Duke of Normandy being the individual who was Dauphin of France, the son of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, and who was said to have died in the Temple, has never been as publicly and satisfactorily settled as it deserves. The high station and unquestionable integrity of the individuals of the Perceval family who instituted the inquiry, and in the most open manner laid the results of that inquiry before the public, constitute an unexceptionable guarantee for its genuineness and authenticity. The acute perception and accurate memory of Madame Tussaud carry great weight with them. She was asked by the writer of this paragraph, if she thought the person calling himself the Duke of Normandy was the same individual she had modelled when a child. Madame Tussaud replied with great emphasis, "I would take my oath of it for he had a peculiar formation on the neck which still remains. Besides something transpired between us, which he referred to, which was never likely to be mentioned to any one." The late Mr. Jeremy, the active and highly intelligent magistrate who presided in the court of Greenwich, and whose long experience adds value to his judgment, was of opinion that there were no traces of the impostor discovered by him during several scrutinising examinations which were held in his office, and that the members of the old French nobility who were present treated him with profound respect. He was supported through unknown channels, was twice shot at, and refused permission by the French government, though it was applied for by legal advocates of the highest standing, to bring the question before the legal tribunals. At first the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia, who knew that the Dauphin was alive, opposed the Duke of Wellington's proposal to reinstate Louis XVIII. The Empress Josephine is also said to have been aware, that the Dauphine did not die in the Temple, and is reported to have said "Ah! legitimacy is nearer than you suppose." It is an unsettled historical question worthy the attention of the historian who has time to bestow on it.

ÆGROTUS.

Anachronisms and Errors of Painters.

—Perhaps the commonest of all anachronisms of painters is that of representing St. John Baptist in a Holy Family, himself a child, adoring the infant Saviour, and carrying a slight cross or flag, with the motto "Ecce Agnus Dei." That John knew our Lord as an eminently holy man is clear frown his expostulation, "I have need to be baptized of Thee," &c.; but he himself most distinctly assures us that it was not till he saw the Spirit descending on Jesus like a dove that he knew him as the promised Messiah and Lamb of God.

I have seen an engraving from an old Master (perhaps some of your correspondents may remember the painting itself) in which the mother of Zebedee's children comes forward to beg the boon on their behalf, James and John being represented as boys of seven or eight, one on each side of her. These errors of painters are perhaps excusable when they occurred at a time when the Bible was not in everybody's hands: but what excuse can we make for artist's blunders now? The Illustrated News has lately given us prints from paintings by living artists, in one of which, "Noah's Sacrifice," a couple of fat ducks figure as clean fowl at the foot of the altar; and in the other, the Five Wise and Five Foolish Virgins have increased into two sevens; neither error being apparently noticed by the editor. It is said that no sea piece, however fine, is admitted to our exhibitions if the rigging is incorrect. Would it not be quite as advisable to exclude Scripture pieces with palpable blunders?

P. P.

The Ring Finger.

—The English Book of Common Prayer orders that the ring should be put "upon the fourth finger of the woman's left hand;" and the spousal manuals of York and Salisbury assign this practical reason for the selection of the said finger:

"Quia in illo digito est quædam vena procedens usque ad cor."—Maskell, Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, 2nd edition, Preface, page clv. note: Lond. 1846.

Aulus Gellius tells us—

"Veteres Græcos annulum habuisse in digito accepimus sinistræ manus, qui minimo est proximus. Romanos quoque homines aiunt, sic plerumque annulis usitatos. Causam esse hujus rei Appianus in libris Ægyptiacis hanc dicit: quod insectis apertisque humanis corporibus, ut mos in Ægypto fuit, quas Graeci ἀνατομὰς appellant, repertum est, nervum quendam tenuissimum ab eo uno digito, de quo diximus, ad cor hominis pergere ac pervenire. Propterea non inscitum visum esse, eum potissimum digitum tali honore decorandum, qui continens et quasi connexus esse cum principatu cordis videretur."—Noctes Atticæ, lib. x. cap. 10.

Other reasons are assigned by Macrobius; and the author of the Vulgar Errors (book iv. ch. 4.) has entirely overthrown the anatomical fiction mentioned above. Can any one give me any further information than that contained in L'Estrange or Wheatly, or in the authors to which they refer? The fourth finger of the left hand is certainly "the least active finger of the hand least used, upon which, therefore, the ring may be always in view, and least subject to be worn out:" but this is a very unromantic and utilitarian idea.

RT.

Warmington, Aug. 9. 1851.

The Od Force.

—As considerable interest appertains to the earlier manifestations of what is now termed Mesmerism, the following Note may not be altogether unworthy of a place.

The experiment, upon which a subjective proof of the agency of the power of Od is founded, as described by Dr. Herbert Mayo in the supplementary chapter to the last edition of Letters on the Truths contained in Popular Superstitions, and alluded to by R. D. H. (Vol. iii., p. 517.), is another instance of there being "nothing new under the sun." In the Bigarrures du Seigneur des Accords, first published at Paris in 1582, in the chapter "Des faux Sorciers et de leur Impostures" occurs the following passage, which I copy verbatim et literatim:—

"Autres ont une ruse, qu'ils semblent d'attacher un anneau d'or ou d'argent à un petit filet, qu'on suspend dans un verre à demy plain d'eaue, et puis l'ayant trempé pair trois fois, disent bellement ce verset du Psalme, autant de fois, 'Ecce enim veritatem dilexisti, incerta et occulta sapientiæ tuæ manifestasti mihi.' L'anneau bat contre le verre, et sonne autant d'heures qu'il en peut estre."

W. PINKERTON.

Ham.

New Costume for Ladies.

—The following paragraph, extracted from a London paper (November, 1794) would lead to the conclusion that the agitation regarding costume now going on in America, is not entirely novel; the Turkish fashion having been introduced unsuccessfully into this metropolis in the last century:—

"The young ladies of haut ton, who have invented Turkish fashions, will not be surprised if their husbands should follow their example, and adopt the Turkish taste for variety.—No man of sense can be long attached to such absurdity!"

G. R.

Thanet Place, Temple Bar, Aug. 20.