Notes and Queries, Number 66, February 1, 1851

    S. G.

Hymns.—Will some of your correspondents favour me with a copy of "Queen Mary's Lament," a translation of which appeared in Coxe's delightful Christian Ballads. Also Adam of St. Victor's "exquisite poem" on the Cross, referred to by Mr. Trench in his Sacred Latin Poetry?

    Jarltzberg.

Camden and Curwen Families.—Camden, in his Britannia, art. "Cumberland," mentions his descent, by the mother's side, from the Curwens of Workington. Should any of your numerous correspondents be able to trace their descent, he would much oblige a member of that family.

    H. C.

Jartuare.—Can any of your readers oblige me with any account of a printed book called Jartuare? Its date would be early in the sixteenth century, if not earlier.

    W.(1.)

Replies

JOHN BUNYAN AND HIS PORTRAIT.—DID BUNYAN KNOW HOBBES?

(Vol. ii., pp. 476. 518.; Vol. iii., p. 70.)

The best portrait of John Bunyan was drawn and engraved by White, to the Holy War, 1682. The original drawing, and a fine impression of the engraving, is preserved in the illustrated Grainger's History of England, in the print-room at the British Museum. It was copied in folio for Bunyan's Works. It has been recently copied for Mr. Bogue's elegant edition of the Pilgrim, and for the first complete edition of Bunyan's Works, now publishing by Messrs. Blackie and Sons, Glasgow. A fac-simile was engraved for an edition of the Pilgrim, by Mr. Pickering, 8vo. 1849.

That the great allegorist was not the author of Heart's Ease in Heart Trouble is perfectly clear, not only that the style is very different, but from the author being known. It was first published in 1690, under the initials of J. B., and the Epistle is dated "From the house of my pilgrimage, March, 1690." Bunyan died in August, 1688. Mr. Palmer, in his Calamy, vol. ii. p.16., states that the author was James Birdwood.

Whether Bunyan was acquainted with Hobbes depends upon the authority of a small volume of Visions of Heaven and Hell, published under the name of Bunyan. In this it is represented that he saw poor Hobbes in hell, and recognised an old acquaintance.

The earliest edition of The Visions which I have been able to discover, is at "London: printed for Edward Midwinter, at the Looking Glass upon London Bridge, price, bound, one shilling;" without date. It was printed early in the reign of George I.; this is seen in an advertisement of books at the end, among which is The Lives of the Monarchs of England to his present Majesty King George. It is entitled, The Visions of John Bunyan, being his last remains. There is no account of either of this, or the Heart's Ease, in The Struggler for the Preservation of Mr. John Bunyan's Labours. This gives a list of forty-three works published by him, and of seventeen left by him at his decease for publication. If The Visions were written by him, it must have escaped the search of his widow and surviving friends; but the style at once proves that it was not a production of his prolific pen. Bunyan's style was remarkably simple and plain. The following phrases extracted from The Visions will carry conviction to every reader:—

"Mormo's of a future state," "metempsychosis of nature," "nefandous villanies," "diurnal and annual," "my visive faculty," "soul-transparent and diaphonous," "translucid ray," "terrene enjoyments," "our minds are clarified," "types both of the ante and post-diluvian world," "the tenuity thereof," "the aereal heavens," "effluxes of divine glory," "all ænigmas," "corruscations of his divine nature," "Solomon's mystick epithalamium," "the epiphonema," "propinquity in nature," "diversified refractions," "too bright and too diaphonous," "sweet odes and eniphalamics," "amarantine crown," "bright corruscancy," "palinodies and elegies," "no cataplasm," "eccentricks quite exterminate," "mutual assassinates," &c. &c.

Such phrases and terms plain John Bunyan utterly despised. They prove, as does the whole plan of the treatise, that it must have been a very different man to the author of the Pilgrim's Progress who wrote these Visions.

It is not likely that Hobbes and Bunyan were acquainted; they lived in distant parts of the country. Bunyan's Pilgrim, which was the foundation of his wide-spread fame, was not published till 1678, when the Leviathan philosopher was ninety years of age; he died in 1679. Hobbes' company were the learned and illustrious among men,—the Des Carteses, Gassendis, and Wallises of his age; while Bunyan associated with the despised Nonconformists. Nor is is likely that Bunyan read the Leviathan; Dent's Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven, The Practice of Piety, Fox's Martyrs, and, above all, his Bible, constituted his library during his imprisonment for conscience-sake, which lasted from 1660 to 1672. Had he suffered from Hobbes's philosophy, he would have proclaimed it upon the house-tops, especially in his Grace Abounding, that others might have been guarded from such dangerous scepticism. The Vision of Hobbes was doubtless intended to render the forgery more popular.

    George Offor.

Hackney, Jan. 1851.

THE MOTHER CHURCH OF THE SAXONS

In "Notes and Queries" (Vol. ii., p. 478.) Sir Henry Ellis observes, that—

"Although St. Martin's, Canterbury, is commonly called the mother church of England on account of its having been the first used here by Augustine, tradition represents, that when this missionary arrived in Kent, he found an ancient church on the site of what is now called St. Martin's."

Sir H. Ellis adds, that—

"A charter of King Canute's styles Saviour's church, Canterbury, the mother and mistress of all churches in the kingdom of England."-Æcclesia Salvatoris, &c.

I conceive these accounts to be perfectly reconcilable. From Bede's Ecclesiastical History (b. i., caps. 25, 26.), we learn that, on the east side of Canterbury, in the year 597, there was a church dedicated to the honour of St. Martin, that was "built while the Romans were still in the island," some two hundred years before this date. St. Martin's was the church wherein Bertha, Queen of Kent, used to pray; she having been a Christian of the Royal Family of the Franks.

It will, of course, be allowed that during the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, different saints were held in especial honour in different countries. For instance, not long after the arrival of the Roman missionaries in England, various churches and monasteries,—at Canterbury, Lindisfarne, Bamborough, Lichfield, Weremouth, and Jarrow, and the capital city of the Picts,—were wholly or partially named after St. Peter. When Naitan, King of the Picts, was about to build his church, he sought the assistance of the Abbot of Weremouth, a strong supporter of Roman observances, and "promised to dedicate the same in honour of St. Peter," and to follow the custom of the Roman church, in certain matters, which the subjects of his kingdom had protested against, for more than a hundred years.

Now, on the occasion of Queen Bertha's leaving France, she was accompanied to England by a bishop of her native country, named Luidhard; and when it is remembered that they settled in Kent, amongst heathens of great superstition,—an example of which is recorded on the part of her own husband,—it is natural to suppose they would, in some public manner, seek the especial protection of the popular saint of France; and that saint was Martin. For so profound was the popular veneration which the Franks at one period offered to the power of Saint Martin, that they even computed ordinary occurrences and national events, by an era which commenced with the year of his death.[3 - See Brady's Clavis Calendaria, November 12.]

It is therefore very probable that the public act of reverence just alluded to, consisted in a new dedication of the repaired church, by adding to the ancient name that of St. Martin.

That a practice of altering the names of sacred edifices in this manner was common at the date under consideration, cannot be questioned. For example, Bishop Aidan, about the year 652, built a church in the island of Lindisfarne, the name of which is now unknown. This structure, however, having been destroyed by a fire, his successor, Finan, erected another on the same site, and apparently of the same name. But when a second fire destroyed this church also, in some five and twenty or thirty years, "a larger church" was erected on the old site, and gratefully "dedicated in honour of St. Peter," by Theodore of Roman appointment, "the first archbishop whom all the English church obeyed." (Bede, iii. 17. and 25., and iv. 2.) Here, then, a new name was given to a church on the site of a former one of different appellation; and in Lichfield, we have two examples of similar alterations in the names of churches; one St. Chad's Church, Stow, and the other, the cathedral. On the site of the former, according to Bede, Bishop Chad built a St. Mary's Church, hard by which he was buried; "but afterwards, when the church of the most holy prince of the apostles, Peter, was built, his bones were translated into it." (Ecc. History, iv. 3.) That is to say, when Chad was canonised, his remains were removed to the site of the present cathedral, as relics over which the principal church of the Mercian kingdom was to be erected.

Throughout the various documents relating to this church, which are preserved in Dugdale's Monasticon, vol. iii. pp. 219-255, Savoy edition, the cathedral is generally styled the church of St. Mary and St. Chad. And again, on a recently discovered seal of the dean and chapter, engraved some two hundred years after Stephen's reign, the inscription is this:

"S' DECANI ET CAPL'I ECCLE'IE SCE MARIE ET SCI CEDDE LYCHFELD' AD CAS."[4 - See the Gentleman's Magazine for August 1848; in which an accurate representation of this seal is given.]

But in a grant from King Stephen to Bishop Roger de Clinton, who commenced the present fabric, it is simply styled ecclesia Sancti Ceddæ de Lichfield; and in the year 1341 a document was addressed Decano et Capitulo ecclesiæ Sancti Ceddæ Lych', as may be learned from the Fœdera, vol. ii. p. 2.

We thus perceive, that the original name of Lichfield Cathedral has been dropped for centuries, and so has that of the church which Bishop Chad built in honour of the Virgin Mary at Stow; for this Church has, for a long time, been known only by the name of Stow Church, or by that of St. Chad's, Stow.

And in this manner, I fancy, may be reconciled the different names of Saviour's, or St. Saviour's, Canterbury, and St. Martin's, Canterbury; both alluding to the same church, THE MOTHER CHURCH of Saxon England.

    J. Rawson, M.D.

Lichfield.

Replies to Minor Queries

The Frozen Horn (Vol. ii., p. 262.; Vol. iii., p. 25.).—In an old edition of Hudibras now before me, I find the following note on the lines quoted by J. M. G.:—

"Some report that in Nova Zembla and Greenland men's words are wont to be frozen in the air, and at the thaw may be heard."

The application of the idea by Charles Dickens, in his Old Curiosity Shop, is also, I think, extremely felicitous.

"'Don't be frightened, mistress,' said Quilp, after a pause. 'Your son knows me: I don't eat babies; I don't like 'em. It will be as well to stop that young screamer though, in case I should be tempted to do him a mischief. Holloa, Sir! will you be quiet?' Little Jacob stemmed the course of two tears which he was squeezing out of his eyes, and instantly subsided into a silent horror.... The moment their [Quilp and Swiveller] backs were turned, little Jacob thawed, and resumed his crying from the point where Quilp had frozen him."—Vol. i. pp. 207-9.

    J. B. Colman.

To Pose.—In Vol. ii., p. 522., your correspondent F. R. A. points out some passages in which the word "posing" appears to be used in a sense equivalent to "parsing." Neither the etymology nor the exact meaning of the word "to pose," are easy to determine. It seems to be abbreviated from the old verb "to appose;" which meant, to set a task, to subject to an examination or interrogatory; and hence to perplex, to embarrass, to puzzle. The latter is the common meaning of the word to pose; thus in Crabbe's Parish Register:—

"Then by what name th' unwelcome guest to call,
Was long a question, and it posed them all."

Hence, too, the common expression, that a question which it is difficult to answer, or an argument which seems to decide the controversy, is a poser. The word "posing" in the passages cited by F. R. A. may refer to the examination of the pupil by the teacher of grammar. Thus, Fuller, in his Worthies, art. Norfolk, says that—

"The University appointed Dr. Cranmer, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, to be the poser-general of all candidates in divinity."

Roquefort, Gloss. de la Langue Romaine, has "apponer, appliquer, poser, plaier." See Richardson in appose and pose.

    L.

Culprits torn by Horses (Vol. ii., p. 480.).—In reply to Mr. Jackson's question respecting culprits torn by horses, I beg to inform him that Robert François Damiens was the last criminal thus executed in France. He suffered on the 28th March, 1757, for an attempt on the life of Louis XV. The awful penalty of the law was carried out in complete conformity with the savage precedents of former centuries. Not one of the preparatory barbarities of question, ordinary and extraordinary, or of the accompanying atrocities of red-hot pincers, melted lead, and boiling oil, was omitted. The agony of the wretched man lasted for an hour and a half, and was witnessed, as Mercier informs us, by all the best company in Paris.

The men amused their leisure with cards, while waiting, as he says, for the boiling oil; and the women were the last to turn their eyes from the hideous spectacle. Your correspondent may be glad to be informed that the same punishment was inflicted on Poltrot de Méré for the murder of the Duke of Guise, in 1563; on Salcède, in 1582, for conspiring against the Duke of Alençon; on Brilland, in 1588, for poisoning the Prince de Condé; on Bourgoing, Prior of the Jacobins, as an accessory to the crime of Jaques Clément, in 1590; and on Ravaillac, for the murder of Henry IV. in 1610. These, with the case of Jean Chastel, are all of which I am aware. If any of your readers can add to the list, I shall feel obliged.