15 Nov.-Edward White. Entred for his copie, &c. a ballad of The triumphes at the tilte and thanksgyvinge, the xvijth of November 1594, for her majesties xxxvij yeares Reigne vj. Die Veneris xv° Novembris.-Edward White. Entred for his copie, &c. a ballad entituled The Unthrifte's Adiew to Jone's ale is newe . vjd. [The popularity of Joan's Ale is new seems almost immediately to have produced imitations of it, to the same tune. The ballad is unknown to us.]

Edward White. Entred for his copie, &c. another ballad, intituled A most joyfull newe ballad shewinge the happines of England for her matics blessed reigne, and the subjectes joy for the vjd.

same

xix die November.-Willm. Ponsonby. Entred for his copie, under thandes of the Wardens, a booke intituled Amoretti and Epithalamion. Written not long since by Edmund Spencer . vjd. [In the writer's Life of Spenser, 1862, p. cxii. it is stated, by mistake, that the above entry belongs to 1595, and not to 1594. Spenser's Amorette &c. were published with the date of 1595, but the above memorandum was, of course, inserted in the Registers in anticipation.] John Wolf. Entred for his copie, &c. a booke intituled Vincentio Saviolo his practise vja. "his practise" of fencing. It came out, in two [I.e." books, with the date of 1595. This is the work to which Touchstone alludes in As you like it, and particularly to that part of it which treats "of the Diversitie of Lies"-"lies certain," "lies conditional," "lies in general," &c. It was dedicated to the Earl of Essex as "the English Achilles."]

xxj Novemb.-Edward Alde. Entred for his copie, &c. a booke intituled A myrror of man's miseries, or a Sommary of the firste parte of the Resolution. vja. [This is to be added to the number of Mirrors published of old. Churchyard published The Mirror of Man and Manners of Men in 1594, but it is probable that some other work was intended by this entry. never saw any such.]

We

Richard Jones. Entred for his copie, &c. a booke intituled The fisherman's tale, conteyninge the storye of Cassander, a gretian knight. . vja. [By Francis Sabie: the second part, Flora's Fortune, is not here mentioned, but they were published together by Richard Jones with the date of 1595, 4to. Few books can be more rare.]

29 Nov. Wm. Ponsonby. Entred for his copie,

&c. a booke intituled a Treatize in commendation of Poetrie, or defence of poesy. Written by Sir Phillip Sidney vja.

[Published in 1595, 4to, with four introductory Sonnets by Henry Constable. The main difference between this and later impressions is, that some of the names are given at length in the 4to. It is included in the folio, 1598.]

2 December.-Richard Feild. Entred for his copie, &c. a booke intituled Thoma Campiane Poema

vja.

[Probably a Latin poem by Thomas Campion, or Campian, who afterwards attained considerable celebrity as an English poet, as well as a musical composer. His works are very scarce, and we only know of a single copy of his Two Bookes of Ayres, n. d., published soon after 1600. On account of its rarity, we may quote from it the following two stanzas of a charming love-song: "Sweet, afford me then your sight,

That surveying all your lookes,
Endlesse volumes I may write,

And fill the world with envyed bookes;
"Which when after ages view,

And shall wonder and despaire,
Women, to find a man so true,

Or men a woman halfe so faire!" The writer is about to print a new selection from the graceful and elegant productions of our early musical composers.]

iiijto die Dec.-Edward White. Entred for his copie, &c. a ballad entituled A sorrowfull songe made uppon the valiant Souldiour, Sr Martin Frobisher, who was slayne neere brest, in Fraunce, in November last

vja.

[Thomas Churchyard in 1578 wrote a Prayse and Reporte of Frobisher's Voyage, and he may have been the author of the Sorrowful Song on his death, but we are not aware that it has survived. It appears by the Stationers' Registers that on 1 Nov. 1578, John Charlwood was fined 5s. for printing an account of" Fourboyser's Voyage without licence." Chalmers (Biog. Dict. xv. 142), states that Frobisher was buried at Plymouth, but the Register of Deaths at Cripplegate, under date 14 Jan. 1594, has this record: "Buried. Sr Martyn Furbisher, knight." Was the body removed thither, or does the register only record the day of Furbisher's burial elsewhere.]

John Danter. Entred for his copie, &c. a booke entituled The historie of Gargantua, &c.

vjd.

[The name only of this criminal seems to be recorded.] him for his copie, &c. Chaucer's workes, by the xx° die Decembris.-Adam Islip. Entred to consent of the wardens, and also by the appointment of Abell Jeffes, to whom this copie was first entred . . vja.

[This is well known as Speght's edition of Chaucer, but though thus entered in Dec. 1594, it was not published until 1598 and again in 1602. Like other and earlier impressions, it contains various pieces not by Chaucer.]

xxviij die Decembr. Thoms Millington. Entred unto him for his copie, &c. a ballad entytuled An excellent newe ballad, declaringe the

monstrous abuce in apparell, and the intollerous pride nowe-a-daies used, &c. vja.

[This, we believe, to have been the registration of Stephen Gosson's poetical and abusive Satire against the excess, &c. in the apparel of women. When published, it was called Pleasant Quippes for upstart newfangled Gentlewomen, &c., containing a pleasant Invective against the fantastical foreigne Toyes daylie used in Women's Apparell. It was first printed in 1595, and again in 1596, but in neither case by Millington: perhaps he did not like the responsibility. It was castrated, reprinted, and finally suppressed by the Percy Society in 1841; but the writer of the present notice is about to re-produce it entire, as a curious, though somewhat broad picture of the manners of the time, by a clergyman, the ancient enemy of theatrical performances.]

J. PAYNE COLLIER.

INEDITED LETTER OF LORD AND LADY RUTHVEN.

The mystery in which that great historical problem, the Gowrie Conspiracy, is still involved, and the sympathy which must always be felt for the unhappy family whose downfall dates from that event, gives peculiar interest to every fragment which serves to throw a gleam of light over the obscurity in which the later history of the Ruthvens is involved.

The readers of "N. & Q." will therefore, I am sure, share with me in acknowledging their obligations to the Noble Lord, by whose courtesy I am enabled to lay before them the following Petition from a copy in his possession. Nor is the document less interesting from the distinctness with which the writer alludes to the fate of his grandfather, "John, Earle of Gowrey, whose life, honour, and estate, were sacrificed to the Courte pretence of a Conspiracy."

"To his highnesse Oliver Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, &c. "The Humble Petition of Patrick Lord Ruthen, and Dame Sarah his Wife,

"Sheweth,

"That the Petitioner is Grandsonne to John Earle of Gowrey, whose life, honour, and estate were sacrificed to the Courte pretence of a Conspiracy, that in pursuance of that oppression, the Infancy and Juvenency of the Petitioner's father suffered 19 years Imprisonment in the Tower of London till the late King was pleased to enlarge him with 500 li pr Ann out of the Exchequer, And in the Parliament of Scotland, 1641, restored him to the Barony of Ruthven, which Pension, notwithstanding it were the whole visible provision the Petitioner's father had for the support of his family, yet the distractions of these times obstructed his due payment, and involved him into inevitable debts which cast him into prison, where he died, leaving the Petitioner and another Sonne in a very poore and lamentable condition; That your Petitioner, having never acted anything to the prejudice of your highnesse's interest, and there being neare 5000 li due for arrears to the Petitioner's father as by Certificate of the Auditor and Receiver gen1 of the Exchequer, And that by reason of your Petitioner's extreme poverty he

ARCHBISHOP LAUD AND HIS SEPULCHRE.

As a sequel to the entries from the Register of Allhallows Barking, I append the following extract from the Vestry Minute Book under the date of July, 1663. On the 21st of that month and year, Laud's body was removed from under the altar of this church, where it had lain for more than nineteen years, and in fulfilment of his own wish, interred at St. John's College, Oxford, where it now lies. The vicar, or curate, or churchwarden appears to have considered the event worthy of poetical treatment, and appends the following lines:

"Upon the remoue of the most Revd. William Lord Archbp of Canterburie his bodie from Allhallowes Barking' London, to Ste. John's Colledg, in Oxford, July the xxit, 1663.

"When first injustice packt up his high Court,
When usurpation grau'd a broad seale for't,
When death in Butcher's dress did th' ax advance,
And tragique purpose, with all circumstance
Of fright and feare, took up the fatall stage
To set rebellion in its Rule and Rage;
When friendship fainted and late Love starke dead,
When few owned him whom Good Men honored,
Then Barkinge home then (thus by the world forsook)
The butchered bodye of the Martyre tooke,
Tore up her quiett marble, lodged him sure
In the cheife chamber of her sepulture;
Where he intire and undisturbed hath bin,
Murther'd and mangl'd tho at's laying in,
Where he's untainted too, free from distrust,
Of a vile mixture with rebellious dust;

To make that sure, braue Andrewes begged it meet To rot att's Coffin, and to rise att's feet. But now our Learned Lawd's to Oxford sent, Ste JOHN's is made Ste WILLIAM's monument, Made so by 'mselfe, this pious Primate's knowne Best by the books and buildings of his owne, Whome tho' the accursed age did then deny, To lay him where the Royall Reliques lye, Which was his due; Att's bodies next remoue, Hee'll Rise and Reigne amongst ye Blest aboue." The name of the poet is not appended, and the handwriting differs from the rest of the book, which was kept by a registrar or vestry clerk. The vicar at that time was Dr. Edward Layfield, Laud's nephew; the curate and lecturer, Mr. Sam. Clarke; the wardens, Mr. Benjamin Shepherd and Mr. Sowden.

Archbishop Laud expresses in his last testament the desire to be buried at St. John's College, Oxford, and particularly not to be buried in the Tower. JUXTA TURRIM.

I am an old resident of Oxford, and never hav

ing heard that interpretation before, think it right to state, that in my opinion it is incorrect, because St. Martin's, or Carfax Church, faces only two ways, that is, east on the High Street, and south on Queen Street (formerly the Butcher Row), the other two sides being built up by houses; and why should St. Martin's Church at Oxford be called four faces any more than any other quadrangular church.

66

Anthony Wood, in his History of the City of Oxford, edited by Peshall, gives these words: Quartervois, or Carfax," and (p. 17) adds, or the place which tendeth or looketh four ways "quadrivium, or four ways;" and it is no doubt the received opinion in Oxford, that Carfax is a corruption of quartervois, because it is situate at the centre of the four principal streets of the city, or rather of those that were, in ancient times, so considered. In 1547, the churchwardens credit themselves with 3s. for three quarters of a year's cleaning of "the Carfox," and there are many similar entries.

So far there appears to be but little reason for my interference with the answer to the query; but another interpretation of Carfax was given a few years back, by a gentleman who had made British

* Col. Eusebius Andrewes, beheaded on Tower Hill, and buried in the chancel of the church, April 23, 1650.

antiquity, and the etymology of words derived from British and Anglo-Saxon, his study: he stated very confidently that the supposed corruption from quartervois was a blunder, and the first syllable was a corruption of caer, and the second of feax, or hair, i. e. the place of hair, in the sense of Golgotha, or the place of skulls. Allow me to solicit the attention of your many learned AngloSaxon scholars to this conjecture, on which I venture the following observations:

1. It is obvious that Oxford, from its central situation, must have existed in British and Roman times, although we have not, so far as my knowledge extends, any Roman remains.

2. Wood states the ancient name to be Caer Memphric, and that he founded it 1000 years before Christ; he also states that it was called Caer Bosso, from the name of an earl, temp. King Arthur.

3. He also (p. 174) gives the authority of a record for the fact that the burgesses of Oxford held their Portmanmote Hall in the churchyard, and this is borne out by the fact that the present town till the reign of Henry III., when it was forfeited hall did not come into the possession of the city by attainder of a Jew, and so fell, confirmed by the Crown, to the corporation.

If Wood's interpretation is to be received, it would be thus,-" St. Martin's Church at the four ways."

But I submit that Quarter could hardly be corrupted to Caer, and that it is probable the place so conspicuous as the heart of the city, and where the citizens met in council, received the name of Caerfeax before the Norman Conquest.

Oxford.

CUCKOO-GUN.

BOS PIGER.

In South Pembrokeshire, the foregoing would be called a ram-es: this word being, perhaps, derived from the Danish ramse, rigmarole. But my object in this letter is, first, to draw attention to the word "cuckoo," which occurs both in the vocabulary of Righ Fiongal, and in this South Pembrokeshire ram-es, in the sense of "gun." I wish to ask, Was some particular sort of gun at one time called a "cuckoo"? Or was it a provincialism for guns in general? And wherefore should the same prevail in "The Land's End" of Scotland, and in "The Land's End" (as it may be called) of Wales? Or have the above doggrel lines a gipsy origin?

The word "lillie" is a puzzle to me. Of course, the spelling is my own, and may not well represent the sound. Will any of your readers be good enough to explain it? I have an explanation which, in case of none more probable appearing, I propose to give at a future date. J. TOMBS.

Minor Notes.

TRADITION THrough few LINKS.-I have recently met a gentleman, whose mother died at Bath in 1822, at the age of eighty-eight. She had talked with a woman, who, when a child, had seen the dead bodies on the field of Lansdowne in 1643. M. N.

GROWTH OF BOGS.-Edward Moon, of Liverpool, in the year 1667, indites a rental of his property there for the guidance of his son and heir. At p. 72 of The Moon Rental, as published by the Chetham Society, he says:

"You may sell fifty pounds' worth at least of turf to the town in a year: for, of my knowledge, you have good black turf at least four yards deep; if so, it may be worth two hundred pounds an acre, and you have ten acres of it; in a word, you know not what it may be worth, lying so near a great town; and if you have half a yard at the bottom ungotten, once in forty years it swells, and grows again."

M. D. TO COLT.-Nares suggests that this verb "may perhaps be derived from the wild tricks of a colt." The doubtful" perhaps," however, with which he ushers in this etymological guess, seems to show that he was aware of the, as I think, fatal objection that "to colt" signifies not so much to frisk or play tricks out of wantonness, as to gull, cheat, or make a fool of. The true root, as it seems to me, is to be found in the Italian verb cogliere, the English word being formed — as is the case with so many derivations from the Latin on the past participle colto. In the Elizabethan times Italy was the fashionable source of some good and much evil, and the Italian verb has not only the derivative meanings attached to "catch" in English and "attraper" in French, but in the modo basso,

or low language, such as would be used by sharpers, it is found in the very expression for robbing or cheating the yokel. (Vide Vanzon, Diz. Univ. d. Ling. Ital., in voc. 66 Agresto, Cogliere, Rubare.”)

BENJ. EASY. LATIN ELEGY BY PRAED: GREEK: ENGLISH.—

In Neale's Views of Seats ("Description of Broadlands"), is a copy of the celebrated Epitaph on Lady Palmerston; and with it, one of the Greek elegy from the Anthologia. The following, by Praed, written at Eton, is something like the Greek, and it has the advantage of being in the same metre a metre particularly adapted to tender subjects:

"Quà gelido recubas, frustrà formosa, sepulchro, Herba viret, niveis herba decora rosis;

Nec signant monumenta locum, nec nomen ademptæ Servant perpetuâ tristia saxa notâ.

Si quid id est, memini! nec sculptas arte columnas, Nec tumuli curat carmina, vera fides.

Sit tibi pro busto pietas; hoc munere vivis,

Et quam non servant marmora, servat amor. Hæc lyra te solita est vivam celebrare meamque, Nec mea, nec viva es, te tamen usque cano; Nam veteres nequeunt nisus dediscere chordæ; Et redeunt labris nomina nota meis. Nulla dies oritur quæ te non reddat amanti, Quæ te non revocat vespera nulla redit. Cùm mihi mors aderit, misero reticente magistro, Sponte suâ poterit Thyrza' referre chelys." W. D.

Queries.

WESTMINSTER SANCTUARY.

Fecknam, Abbot of Westminster in the reign of Queen Mary, produced before Parliament, on the second reading of a Bill concerning Sanctuaries, two documents relating to the Sanctuary at Westminster :

"The one whearof was the Charter of Sanctuarie graunted to the house of Westminster by King Edward the Sainct; the other a confirmacion of the same charter with a censure of cursse vppon the breakers thearof, made at the request of the said King Edward by the Pope John, at a generall synode by hym assembled for that purpose."

That the worthy abbot passed off these documents as original and authentic, is proved by his statement in reference to a fact mentioned in one of them, namely, the dream of St. Edward, of which the abbot says:

the abbot, in the simple innocence of his heart, declared "how, as by miracle, these Charters were preserved, being found by a servant of my Lord Cardinall's in a chield's hand playing with them in the street"!! Of course miraculous agency could effect anything, even the fact of both of these documents being found together in the hand of the same "chield." Was this a miracle by "my Lord Cardinall," or by the worthy abbot himself? Is anything authentic known of such documents? Is there any record of a general synod having been called "by Pope John" for the purpose mentioned? Does Westminster still possess the rights of sanctuary, and if not when were these rights abolished?

The abbot mentions in the same speech another noteworthy fact, in reference to the body of King Edward; here are his words:

"The bodie of that most hollie King S. Edward, which

bodio the favour of All Mightie God so preserved, during the time of our late schisma, that though the heritikes had power vppon that whearin the bodie was enclosed, yet on that sacred bodie had they no power; but I have found it, and sens my comming I have restored it to its auncient sepulture."

Where did he find it? Is it known whether the shrine now contains a body, and if so, is there any proof that it is indeed "the bodie of that most hollie Sainct," and not the corpse of some chield," obtained by the abbot himself? Doubtless your valuable correspondent, who pens his Cuttleisms under the benign influences of Poets' Corner, may throw some light on these subjects.

66

PRINCE ARTHUR. Can you, or any of your correspondents, inform me on what authority Shakspeare, in his play of King John, lays the scene of Prince Arthur's death at Northampton, and the occasion of it- his attempting to escape from his prison by leaping from its battlements ?

Hume informs us that the king first proposed to William de la Bray, one of his servants, to despatch Arthur; but William replied that he was a gentleman, and not a hangman, and positively refused compliance. Another instrument of murder was found, and despatched with proper orders, to Falaise, but Hubert de Bourg, Chamberlain to the King, feigning that he himself would execute the king's mandate, sent back the assassin, and spread the report that the young prince was dead, &c. &c. Upon John discovering the falsity of the report, he removed him to the

Castle of Rouen, and there, with his own hands, butchered him, and fastening a stone round his body, threw him into the Seine. G. S. E.

CAVE HOUSE SCHOOL.-I have seen a notice of a little vol. called Recitations of the Pupils at Cave House School, 1841. It contains an amusing jeu d'esprit-" Parliamentary Debate on a Resolution for the admission of Ladies to the House of Commons"- written, I presume, by the Master. Where is Cave House School, and who was the master of the school? R. INGLIS.

In

"CZARINA," "CZARINE."-How came we and the French to call by these names the wife of the Czar, or Tsar, of Russia? I know nothing of Russian, but by my Dictionary (Reiff's) I make out the feminine of Tsar to be Tsaritsa. "N. & Q." 1st S. viii. 226, MR. BUCKTON states the word to be Tsarina. On what authority? How did the Cz come to be used by us? Surely this spelling did not originate with the Germans. They have no such combination in their language, and the true phonetic spelling for them would be Zar. Both in Bohemian and Polish, cz in combination produce the sound of English ch in chase," ," "chair." In Hungarian, to be sure, Cz is equivalent to ts, but we certainly did not get Czar through that channel. As ts suggests to an ordinary English reader a more intelligible sound than cz, it seems a pity we do not always write Tsar instead of Czar. J. DIXON. DON CARLOS.-Glover, in Memoirs of a Literary Character, says, "Don Carlos told me." Don Carlos is probably a sobriquet. For whom? FITZHOPKINS.

66

EXTRAORDINARY CHRISTMAS CAROL. In a town in Mid Kent some children were going from house to house the other day, singing carols; one of them struck me as very odd; I took down the words as well as I could collect them, which ran thus,

"As I sat under a sycamore tree [the last three words three times]

I looked me out upon the sea,

A Christmas day in the morning.

"I saw three ships a-sailing there, [three times, as above]

The Virgin Mary and Christ they bare,

A Christmas day in the morning.

"He did whistle and she did sing [three times]
And all the bells on earth did ring,

A Christmas day in the morning.

"And now we hope to taste your cheer [three times], And wish you all a happy new year.

A Christmas day in the morning."

The children said there were a great many more verses, which they did not know. Has this very singular production ever been printed? The tune was that generally known among children as "A cold and frosty morning."

A. A.