Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853

"For sixteen years he persevered in this way; and then was crowned with success, and produced the first specimens of coloured and beautiful pottery, such as are to this day sought by the curious; and he received a situation in the king's household, and ended his days in comfort and respectability."

In the review of "Morley's Life of Palissy the Potter," Spectator, Oct. 9, 1852, it is said:

"The period of the great potter's birth is uncertain. Mr. Morley fixes it, on probable data, at 1509; but with a latitude of six years on either side. Palissy died in 1589 in the Bastile, where he had been confined four years as a Hugenot; the king and his other friends could defer his trial, but dared not grant him liberty."

All the accounts which I have read agree with Mr. Morley and the Spectator. Are they or the cardinal right, supposing him to be correctly reported?

    H. B. C.

U. U. Club.

Minor Queries

Polidus.—Can you tell me where the scene of the following play is laid, and the names of the dramatis personæ?—Polidus, a Tragedy, by Moses Browne, 8vo. 1723. The author of this play, who was born in 1703, and died in 1787, was for some time the curate of the Rev. James Harvey, author of Meditations, and other works. Mr. Browne was afterwards presented to the vicarage of Olney, in Bucks, where the Rev. John Newton was his curate for several years.

    A. Z.

Glasgow.

[Moses Browne was subsequently Chaplain of Morden College. The piscatory brotherhood are indebted to him for having revived Walton's Complete Angler, after it had lain dormant for upwards of eighty years; and this task, he tells us, was undertaken at the request of Dr. Samuel Johnson.—Ed.]

St. Paul's Epistles to Seneca.—It has frequently been affirmed that Seneca became, in the last year of his life, a convert to Christianity—his canonisation by St. Jerome is undoubted and there was stated to be a MS. of the above epistle in Merton College. May I ask any of your contributors whether this MS. has ever been printed?

    J. M. S.

Hull.

Meaning of "folowed."—Inside the cover of an old Bible and Prayer-Book, bound in one quarto, Robert Barker, 1611, is the following inscription:

"July eight I was much folowed when I lay in bed alone att Mistris Whitmore's house, wee haveing agreed too bee married nextt daye.

"God, even our own God, shal bless us. This incouriged mee too hope for God's favour and blessing through Christ.

"Christopher Curwen and Hannah Whitmore was married att Lambe's Chapel, near Criplegate, July ninth, 1712."

An entry of his marriage with his first wife, Elizabeth Sutton, 1704, is on the cover at the beginning of the book.

Can any one of your correspondents enlighten me as to the meaning of the word folowed? The letters are legibly written, and there can be no mistake about any of them. Is it an expression derived from the Puritans?

    H. C. K.

—– Rectory, Hereford.

Roman Catholic Registers.—Can any of your correspondents inform me where I can find the registers of births, marriages, and burials of Roman Catholic families living in Berks and Oxon in the reigns of Charles I. and II.?

    A. Pt.

St. Alban's Day.—At p. 340. of the Chronicles of London Bridge, it is stated that Cardinal Fisher was executed on St. Alban's day, June 22, 1535. How is it that in our present calendar St. Alban's day is not June 22, but June 17? On looking back I see Sir W. C. Trevelyan, in our first volume, inquired the reason of this change, but I do not find any reply to his Query.

    E. H. A.

Meigham, the London Printer.—J. A. S. is desirous of obtaining information regarding a printer in London, of the name of Meigham, about 1745-8, or to be directed where to search for such. Meigham conversed, or corresponded, about Catholicity with Dr. Hay, the then vicar-apostolic of the Eastern District of Scotland.

Adamsoniana.—Is anything known of the family of Michel Adamson, or Michael Adamson, the eminent naturalist and voyager to Senegal, who, though born in France, is said to have been of Scottish extraction?

Where is the following poem to be met with?

"Ode in Collegium Bengalense, præmio dignata quod alumnis collegiorum Aberdonensium proposuit vir reverendus C. Buchanan, Coll. Bengalensis Præfectus Vicarius. Auctore Alexandro Adamson, A.M., Coll. Marisch. Aberd. alumno."

Allow me to repeat a Query which was inserted in Vol. ii., p. 297., asking for any information respecting J. Adamson, the author of a rare tract on Edward II.'s reign, published in 1732, in defence of the Walpole administration from the attacks of the Craftsman.

Who was John Adamson, author of Fanny of Caernarvon, or the War of the Roses, an historical romance, of which a French translation was published in 1809 at Paris, in 2 vols. 12mo.?

    E. H. A.

Canker or Brier Rose.—Can any of your correspondents tell me why the brier or dog-rose was anciently called the canker? The brier is particularly free from the disease so called, and the name does not appear to have been used in disparagement. In Shakspeare's beautiful Sonnet LIV. are the lines:

"The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye,
As the perfumed tincture of the roses."

In King Henry IV., Act I. Sc. 3., Hotspur says:

"Shall it for shame be spoken in these days,
Or fill up chronicles in times to come,
That men of your nobility and power,
Did 'gage them both in an unjust behalf,
(As both of you, God pardon it! have done)
To put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose
And plant this thorn, this canker Bolingbroke."

And again, Don John, in Much Ado about Nothing, Act I. Sc. 3.:

"I had rather be a canker in a hedge, than a rose in the grave."

    Anon.

"Short red, god red."—In Roger of Wendover's Chronicle, Bohn's edition, vol. i. p. 345., is a story how Walchere, Bishop of Durham, was slain in his county court, A.D. 1075, by the suitors on the instigation of one who cried out in his native tongue "Schort red, god red, slea ye the bischop."

Sir Walter Scott, in his Tales of a Grandfather (vol. i. p. 85.), tells the same story of a Bishop of Caithness who was burned for enforcing tithes in the reign of Alexander II. of Scotland (about 1220).

What authority is there for the latter story? Did Sir Walter confound the two bishops, or did he add the circumstance for the amusement of Hugh Littlejohn? Was this the formula usually adopted on such occasions? How came the Caithness people to speak such good Saxon?

    G.

Overseers of Wills.—I have copies of several wills of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in which one set of persons are appointed executors and another overseers. What were the rights and duties of these latter?

    J. K.

Lepel's Regiment.—Can your correspondent Mr. Arthur Hamilton inform me what is the regiment known in 1707 as Lepel's Regiment? It was a cavalry regiment, I believe.