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Minor Notes

Nonsuch Palace.—Our antiquarian friends may not be aware that traces of this old residence of Elizabeth are still to be seen near Ewell. Traditions of it exist in the neighbourhood and Hansetown, and Elizabethan coins are frequently dug up near the foundations of the "Banquetting House," now inclosed in a cherry orchard not far from the avenue that joins Ewell to Cheam. In a field at some distance is an old elm, which the villagers say once stood in the court-yard of the kitchen. Near this is a deep trench, now filled with water, and hedged by bushes, which is called "Diana's Dyke," now in the midst of a broad ploughed field, but formerly the site of a statue of the Grecian goddess, which served as a fountain in an age when water-works were found in every palace-garden, evincing in their subjects proofs of the revival of classical learning. The elm above-mentioned measures thirty feet in the girth, immediately below the parting of the branches. Its age is "frosty but kindly;" some two or three hundred summers have passed over its old head, which, as yet, is unscathed by heavens fire, and unriven by its bolt. The ground here swells unequally and artificially, and in an adjoining field, long called, no one knew why, "the Conduit Field," pipes that brought the water to the palace have lately been found, and may be seen intersected by the embankments of the Epsom railway.

The avenue itself is one of the old approaches to the palace, and was the scene of a skirmish during the civil wars.

Your readers may, perhaps, forget that this palace was the scene of the fatal disgrace of young Essex.

George W. Thornbury.

Ferrar and Benlowes.—The preface to that very singular poem, Theophila: Love's Sacrifice. Lond. 1652, by Edw. Benlowes, contains a passage so closely resembling the inscription "in the great parlour" at Little Gidding (Peckard's Life of Nic. Ferrar, p. 234), that the coincidence cannot have been accidental, and, if it has not been elsewhere pointed out, may be worth record. As the inscription, thought not dated, was set up during the life of Ferrar, who died in 1637, the imitation was evidently not his. Only so much of the inscription is here given as is requisite to show the parallel.

"He who (by reproof of our errors, and remonstrance of that which is more perfect) seeks to make us better, is welcome as an Angel of God: and he who (by a cheerful participation of that which is good) confirms us in the same, is welcome as a Christian friend. But he who faults us in absence, for that which in presence he made show to approve of, doth by a double guilt of flattery and slander violate the bands both of friendship and charity."

Thus writes Benlowes:

"He who shall contribute to the improvement of the author, either by a prudent detection of an errour, or a sober communication of an irrefragable truth, deserves the venerable esteem and welcome of a good Angel. And he who by a candid adherence unto, and a fruitful participation of, what is good and pious, confirms him therein, merits the honourable entertainment of a faithful friend: but he who shall traduce him in absence for what in presence he would seem to applaud, incurres the double guilt of flattery and slander: and he who wounds him with ill reading and misprision, does execution on him before judgement."
G. A. S.

Traditions from remote Periods through few Links (Vol. iii., p. 206.).—The communication of H. J. B., showing how a subject of our beloved Queen Victoria can, with the intervention, as a lawyer would say, of "three lives," connect herself with one who was a liegeman of that very dissimilar monarch, Richard III., reminds me of a fact which I have long determined in some way to commit to record. It is this: My father, who is only sixty-eight years old, is connected in a similar mode with a person who had the plague during the prevalence of that awful scourge in the metropolis in the year 1665, with the intervention of one life only. My grandfather, John Lower of Alfriston, co. Sussex, distinctly remembered an aged woman, who died at the adjacent village of Berwick at about ninety, and who had, in her fourth year, recovered from that frightful disease. Should it please Providence to spare my father's life to see his eighty-third birthday, the recollections of three persons will thus connect events separated by a period of two centuries.

I may take this opportunity of mentioning a fact which may interest such of the readers of "Notes and Queries" as are students of natural history. My grandfather, who was born in the year 1735 (being the son of Henry Lower, born on the night of the memorable storm of November, 1703), was among the very last of those who engaged in the sport of bustard-hunting in the South Downs. This bird has been extinct, on at least the eastern portion of that range, for upwards of a century. The sport was carried on by means of dogs which hunted down the poor birds, and the sticks of the human (or inhuman?) pursuers did the rest. My ancestor was "in at the death" of the last of the bustards, somewhere about 1747, being then twelve years old.

Mark Antony Lower.

Lewes.

Longevity.—Some few years since I had occasion to search the parish registers of Evercreech in Somersetshire, in one of which I met with the following astounding entry:—

"1588. 20th Dec., Jane Britton of Evercriche, a Maidden, as she afirmed of the age of 200 years, was buried."

I can scarcely believe my own note, made however, with the register before me.

C. W. B.

The Thirty-nine Articles.—The following MS. note is in a copy which I have (4to. 1683):

"Sept. 13. 1702.
"Memor. That Mr. Thomas King did then Read publickly and distinctly, in a full Congregation during the Time of Divine Service, the nine and thirty Articles of Religion, and Declare his Assent and Consent, &c., according as is Required in the Act of Uniformity, In the Parish Church of Ellesmere, In the Presence of Us, who had the said Articles printed before Us.
E. Kynaston.
Tho. Eyton.
Ar. Langford.
Will. Swanwick."
J. O. M.

Emendation of a Passage in Virgil.—Allow me to send you an emendation of the usual readings of the 513th line of the first Georgic, which occurred to me many years ago, and which still appears to me more satisfactory than any which have hitherto been suggested.

"Ut, cum carceribus sese effudere quadrigæ,
Ac sunt in spatio,—en frustra retinacula tendens,
Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus habenas."

"When the chariots have passed the barriers,
And are now in the open course,—
Lo, the charioteer vainly pulling the
Reins, is carried along by the steeds."

The usual readings are "addunt in spatio," or "addunt in spatia," which are difficult to be explained or understood. The emendation which I suggest is, I think, simple, easy, and intelligible; and I can imagine how the word "addunt" arose from the mistake of a transcriber, by supposing that the MS. was written thus:—acvnt, with a long closely following the c, so as to resemble a d.

Scriblerus.

Poems discovered among the Papers of Sir K. Digby.—In page 18. of your current volume is a poem of which I am anxious to know the author: it is entitled the "Houre-Glasse." Among the poems of Amaltheus I have discovered one so like it, that it appears to be almost a translation. It is curious, and but little known, so that I trust you can find it a place in "Notes and Queries."

"HOROLOGIUM PULVERUM, TUMULUS ALCIPPI.

Perspicuo in vitro pulvis qui dividit horas
Dum vagus augustum sæpe recurrit iter,
Olim erat Alcippus, qui Gallæ ut vidit ocellos,
Arsit, et est cæco factus ab igne cinis.—
Irrequiete cinis, miseros testabere amantes
More tuo nulla posse quiete frui."

H. A. B.

Matter-of-fact Epitaph.—May I venture to ask a place for the following very matter-of-fact epitaph in the English cemetery at Leghorn?

"Amstelodamensis situs est hic Burr. Johannes,
Quatuor è lustris qui modò cratus erat:
Ditior anne auro, an meritis hoc nescio: tantas
Cæca tamen Clotho non toleravit opes."

which may be thus freely rendered:

"Here lie the remains of a Dutchman named Burr. John,
Who baffled at twenty the skill of his surgeon;
Whether greater his merits or wealth, I doubt which is,
But Clotho the blind couldn't bear such great riches."

C. W. B.

Queries

ANCIENT DANISH ITINERARY: PROL IN ANGLIAM

An ancient scholiast on Adam of Bremen, "paululum Adamo ratione ætatis inferior," according to his editor, Joachim Maderus, supplies us with a curious list of the stations in the voyages from Ripa, in Denmark, to Acre, in the Holy Land. Adam of Bremen's Ecclesiastical History dates toward the end of the eleventh century, about 1070. His text is as follows:—

"Alterum (episcopatum) in Ripa; quæ civitas alio tangitur alveo, qui ab oceano influit, et per quem vela torquentur in Fresiam, vel in nostram Saxoniam, vel certe in Angliam."

The scholiast has this note:—

"De Ripa in Flandriam ad Cuicfal velificari potest duobus diebus, et totidem noctibus; de Cuicfal ad Prol in Angliam duobus diebus et una nocte. Illud est ultimum caput Angliæ versus Austrum, et est processus illuc de Ripa angulosus inter Austrum et Occidentem. De Prol in Britanniam ad Sanctum Matthiam, uno die,—inde ad Far, juxta Sanctum Jacobum tribus noctibus. Inde Leskebone duobus diebus inter Austrum et Occidentem. De Leskebone ad Narvese tribus diebus et tribus noctibus, angulariter inter Orientem et Austrum. De Narvese ad Arruguen quatuor diebus et quatuor noctibus, angulariter inter Aquilonem et Orientem. De Arruguen ad Barzalun uno die, similiter inter Aquilonem et Orientem. De Barzalun ad Marsiliam uno die et una nocte, fere versus Orientem, declinando tamen parum ad plagam Australem. De Marsilia ad Mezein in Siciliam quatuor diebus et quatuor noctibus, angulariter inter Orientem et Austrum. De Mezein ad Accharon xiiii diebus et totidem noctibus, inter Orientem et Austrum, magis appropiando ad Austrum."

We may fairly consider that the stations marked in this itinerary are of great antiquity. "Prol in Angliam" is, no doubt, Prawle Point, in Devonshire; a headland which must have been well known to the Veneti long before the days of Adam of Bremen. Its mention here is one among the many proofs of the early importance of this coast, the ancient "Littus Totonesium," the scene of one of Marie's fabliaux, and of some curious passages in Layamon's Brut, which are not to be found in the poem of Wace. I wish to ask,—

1. Is the word "Prol" Saxon or British, and what is its probable etymology?

2. Where was "Cuicfal in Flandriam," from whence the voyage was made to Prol?

Richard John King.

CHIMING, TOLLING, AND PEAL-RINGING OF BELLS

Some of your clerical readers, as well as myself, would probably be glad to have determined, what are the proper times and measures in which the bells of a church ought to be rung. There seems to be no uniformity of practice in this matter, nor any authoritative directions, by which the customs that obtain may be either improved or regulated. The terms chiming, tolling, and peal-ringing, though now generally understood, do not intelligibly apply to the few regulations about bells which occur in the canons.

I believe that chiming is the proper method of summoning the congregation to the services of the church: and tolling certainly appears to be the most appropriate use of the bell at funerals. But chiming the bells is an art that is not recognised in the older rules respecting their use. For instance, the Fifteenth Canon orders that on Wednesdays and Fridays weekly, warning shall be given to the people that litany will be said, by tolling of a bell. And, on the other hand, though we toll at a funeral, the Sixty-seventh Canon enjoins that—

"After the party's death, there shall be rung no more but one short peal, and one other before the burial, and one other after the burial.

The peal here alluded to does not of course mean what Mr. Ellacombe has so clearly described to be a modern peal, in Vol. i., p. 154., of "Notes and Queries;" but it would at least amount, I suppose, to consonantia campanarum, a ringing together of bells, as distinguished from the toll or single stroke on a bell. Horne Tooke says:

"The toll of a bell is its being lifted up (tollere, to raise), which causes that sound we call its toll."

The poet does not clear the ambiguity and confusion of terms, when he sings—

"Faintly as tolls the evening chime!"

Peals are not heard in London on Sunday mornings, I believe; but in the country, at least hereabouts, they are commonly rung as the summons to church, ending with a few strokes on one bell; and then a smaller bell than any in the peal (the sanctus bell of old, perhaps, and now sometimes vulgarly called "Tom Tinkler") announces that divine service is about to begin.

The object of these remarks is to elicit clearly what is the right way of ringing the bells of a church on the several occasions of their being used.

Alfred Gatty.

Ecclesfield.

MAZER WOOD: GUTTA PERCHA

In the Musæum Tradescantianum, or a Collection of Rarities preserved at South Lambeth, near London, by John Tradescant, 1656, I find, amongst "other variety of rarities," "the plyable Mazer wood, which, being warmed in water, will work to any form;" and a little farther on, in the list of "utensils and household stuffe," I also find "Mazer dishes." In my opinion, it is more than a coincidence that Doctor Montgomery, who, in 1843, received the gold medal of the Society of Arts for bringing gutta percha and its useful properties under the notice of that body, describes it in almost the same words that Tradescant uses when speaking of the pliable Mazer wood: the Doctor says, "it could be moulded into any form by merely dipping it into boiling water." It is worthy of remark that Tradescant, who was the first botanist of his day, seems to have been uncertain of the true nature of the "Mazer wood," for he does not class it with his "gums, rootes, woods;" but, as before observed, in a heterogeneous collection which he styles "other variety of rarities." Presuming, as I do, that this Mazer wood was what we now term gutta percha, the question may be propounded, how could Tradescant have procured it from its remote locale? The answer is easy. In another part of the Musæum Tradescantianum may be found a list of the "benefactors" to the collection; and amongst their names occurs that of William Curteen, Esq. Now this William Curteen and his father Sir William, of Flemish Descent, were the most extensive British merchants of the time, and had not only ships trading to, but also possessed forts and factories on, some of the islands of the Eastern Archipelago, the native habitat of the sapotaceous tree that yields the gutta percha. Curteen was a collector of curiosities himself, and no doubt his captains and agents were instructed to procure such: in short, a specimen of gutta percha was just as likely to attract the attention of an intelligent Englishman at Amboyna in the fifteenth century, as it did at Singapore in the nineteenth.

If there are still any remains of Tradescant's collection in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, the question, whether the Mazer wood was gutta percha or not, might be soon set at rest; but it is highly probable that the men who ordered the relics of the Dodo to be thrown out, showed but little ceremony to the Mazer wood or dishes.

A curious instance of a word, not very dissimilar to Mazer, may be found in Eric Red's Saga, part of the Flatö Annals, supposed to be written in the tenth century, and one of the authorities for the pre-Columbian discovery of America by the Icelanders. Karlsefne, one of the heroes of the Saga, while his ship was detained by a contrary wind in a Norwegian port, was accosted by a German, who wished to purchase his, Karlsefne's, broom.

"'I will not sell it,' said Karlsefne. 'I will give you half a mark in gold for it,' said the German man. Karlsefne thought this a good offer, and thereupon concluded the bargain. The German man went away with the broom. Karlsefne did not know what wood it was; but it was Mæsur, which had come from Wineland!"

Perhaps some reader may give an instance of Mazer wood being mentioned by other writers; or inform me if the word Mazer, in itself, had any peculiar signification.