Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850

In answer to your Query relative to the death of Richard II., and his dying at Pontefract, I beg to refer you to Devon's printed Pell Records, Hen. III. to Hen. VI., p. 275, for the following entry:

"17 February. To Thos. Tuttabury, clerk, keeper of the king's wardrobe, In money paid to him by the hands of Wm. Pampleon, Esq., for expenses incurred for the carriage of the body of Richard, late king of England, from the town of Pomferait to London, by Writ, &c., 66l. 13s. 4d."

Again, at page 276.:

"To a certain other valet, sent from London, by direction of the king's council, to Pontfreyt Castle for the protection and safe custody of the body of Richard II., late king of England, In money paid to his own hands for his wages and expenses, 6s. 8d."

This seems to be decisive of the question; but there are several other interesting entries bearing on the same point.

    D.P.R.

Scottish Prisoners sold to Plantations (Vol. ii., pp. 297. 350. 379.).—

"The judgements of heaven were never so visible upon any people as those which have fallen upon the Scots since [the sale of Charles I.]; for, besides the sweeping furious plague that reigned in Edinburgh, and the incredible number of witches which have increased, and have been executed there since; besides the sundry shameful defeats they have received by the English, who carried away more of them prisoners than they were themselves in number; besides that many of them died of mere hunger; besides that they were sold away slaves, at half a crown a dozen, for foreign plantations among savages; I say besides all this chain of judgements, with diverse others, they have quite lost their reputation among all mankind; some jeer them, some hate them, and none pity them."—Howell's German Dict., p. 65., 1653.

Echard, in Hist. Eng., vol. ii. p. 727., speaking of the prisoners taken at Worcester, says that Cromwell

"marched up triumphantly to London, driving four or five thousand prisoners like sheep before him; making presents of them, as occasion offered, as of so many slaves, and selling the rest for that purpose into the English plantations abroad."

    W. DN.

Lachrymatories.—There is absolutely no authority in any ancient author for this name, and the best scholars speak of these vessels as the bottles usually called lachrymatories, &c. It would be curious to discover when the name was first used, and by whom first this absurd use was imagined. It [illegible] that their proper use was to contain perfumes, scents, and unguents, as sweet odours to rest with the departed. Becker says:

"Bottles, filled with perfumes, were placed inside the tomb, which was besprinkled odoribus. These are the tear-flasks, or lachrymatories, so often mentioned formerly."—Gallus, p. 413. Eng. Tr.

A wasteful use of perfumes at funerals (sumptuosa respersio, Cicero de Legibus, ii. 23.) was forbidden by the Twelve Tables. The eighth verse of the fifty-sixth Psalm,

"My flight thou numberest: put my tears in thy bottle: stand they not in thy book?"—Hengstenberg, Clarke's Tr. Edinb.

is, I believe, the only evidence that can be brought in favour of the old opinion; but we surely cannot take the highly figurative language of Eastern poetry to establish a Roman custom of which we have no hint elsewhere. This verse admits of a much simpler interpretation; see Arndt, quoted by Hengstenberg ad locum. From a review of Museum Disneianum, which appeared in No. XXIII. of the Classical Museum, it seems that Mr. Disney has devoted to this subject some pages of the introduction to Part II. of the above work, of which a summary is given by the reviewer.

    ED. S. JACKSON.
    Torreridge, Herts, Oct. 23.

Querela Cantabrigiensis (Vol. ii., pp. 168. 205.).—MR. SANSOM is sustained by Anthony Wood in assigning the Querela to Dean Ryves; but it may be doubted whether he were anything but the editor, publishing it as an Appendix to the Mercurius Rusticus. The title of the work is Querela Cantabrigiensis: or A Remonstrance by way of Apologie for the banished Members of the late flourishing University of Cambridge, by some of the said Sufferers. Now Dean Ryves was a member of the University of Oxford. In Wood's Fasti, it is stated that he took the degree of B.A., Oct. 26, 1616, being then of New College. On June 9, 1619, he was admitted of Magdalen College, as a member of which he took his B.D. in 1632, and proceeded to D.D. in 1639. He had nothing therefore to do with the sufferings of the members of the University of Cambridge. In the Life of Dr. Barwick, the account given of the Querela Cantabrigiensis is:—

"But Mr. Barwick's no inconsiderable part of this tragedy, together with others of the university, groaning under the same yoke of tyranny, and each taking a particular account of the sufferings of his own college, gave a distinct narrative of all these barbarities, and under the title of Querela Cantabrigiensis, or the University of Cambridge's Complaint, got it printed by the care of Mr. Richard Royston, a bookseller of London, who did great service to his king and country, by printing and disposing, in the most difficult times, books written in defence of the royal cause." pp. 32-33.

In the Appendix (p.495. note), Dr. Bruno Ryves is mentioned, and spoken of as the author of Mercurius Rusticus; but no notice is taken of his being one of the authors of the Querela. Of Dr. Ryves, who assisted in the Polyglot, a good account is given in Todd's Life of Bishop Walton, vol. i. pp. 306-309.

Barwick was upon another occasion assisted in a work against the League and Covenant, published in 1644, by William Lacy of St. John's, Isaac Barrow of Peter-House, Sethward of Sidney College, Edmund Baldero, and William Quarles of Pembroke Hall, and Peter Gunning of Clare Hall. It is not an improbable conjecture that some of these distinguished men assisted in the composition of the Querela.

    A.B.R.
    Easton.

"Then" for "than."—At the end of Selden's Titles of Honour (edit. 1631), after the list of "Faults escapled in print," occur the words, "may with no less difficulty be amended then observed?" Was the word then commonly used in the sense of than; or is it a misprint?

    P.H.F.

[Dr Latham, in English Language, p. 377. (3d ed.), observes. "As to the word than, the conjunction of comparison, it is a variety of then; the notions of order, sequence, and comparison, being allied. This is good; then (or next in order) that is good, is an expression sufficiently similar to this is better than that to have given rise to it."]

Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (Vol. ii., p. 407.).—"The Papal decision" referred to may probably be found in the Popes Letters of 2nd Feb. 1849, and of 20th May, 1850. The former professes to seek for information on this question from the priests and bishops of the whole Catholic world, but at the same time it enunciates clearly the Pope's opinion in favour of the doctrine.

    J.H.M.
    Bath.

In the Catholic Annual Register for the Year ended 30th June, 1850, published by Dolman, will be found the recent Allocution of his Holiness Pius IX., a Pastoral of the Cardinal Wiseman, and one from the bishops of America on this subject; from which your correspondent L. will be fully able to discover the present state of the doctrine of the Catholic Church on this mystery.

    FESTE.

Letters of Horning (Vol. ii., p. 393.).—Letters of Horning, in the law of Scotland, are writs issuing under the signet of the sovereign (used in the Supreme Court, or Court of Session, for signifying the sovereign's assent to writs issuing from that court) obtained by creditors, commanding messengers at arms

"To charge the debtor to pay or perform his obligation within a day certain." … "If payment be not made within the days mentioned in the horning, the messsenger, after proclaiming three oyesses at the marketcross of the head borough of the debtor's domicil, and reading the letters there, blows three blasts with a horn, by which the debtor is understood to be proclaimed rebel to the king for contempt of his authority."

§ 26. "Denunciation, if registered within fifteen days, either in the sheriff's books or in the general register, drew after it the rebel's single cheat, i.e. forfeiture of his moveables to the crown. So severe a penalty, with the character of rebel affixed to denunciation on civil debts, was probably owing to this; that anciently letters of horning were not granted but to enforce the performance of facts within one's own power, and when afterwards [in 1584] they came to be issued on liquid debts, the legislature neglected to soften the penalty. Insomuch that those who were denounced rebels, even for a civil cause, might be put to death with impunity till 1612. Persons denounced rebels have not a persona standi ne judicio. They can neither sue nor defend in any action."

I have preferred, to any explanation of my own, to make the preceding extracts from Erskine's Principles of the law of Scotland, Book ii., Title 5., Sections 24, 25, 26.,—a standard institutional work of the highest authority.

For those who are disinclined to examine the subject too gravely, I must refer to another authority equally worthy of credit, viz. Sir Walter Scott's Antiquary, where, in Chapter xviii.,

"Full of wise saws and modern instances."

the subject of imprisonment for debt in Scotland is discussed most ably by Jonathan Oldbuck, Esq., of Monkbarns, who proves to his nephew, Captain McIntyre, that in that happy country no man can be legally imprisoned for debt. He says,—

"You suppose now a man's committed to prison because he cannot pay his debts? Quite otherwise; the truth is, the king is so good as to interfere at the request of the creditor, and to send the debtor his royal command to do him justice within a certain time; fifteen days, or six, as the case may be. Well, the man resists, and disobeys; what follows? Why, that he be lawfully and rightfully declared a rebel to our gracious sovereign, whose command he has disobeyed, and that by three blasts of a horn, at the market-place of Edinburgh, the metropolis of Scotland. And he is then legally imprisoned, not on account of any civil debt, but because of his ungrateful contempt of the royal mandate."

I have only quoted what was absolutely necessary to answer the Query; but there is much more to be found on the subject in the same place.

I cannot suppose that there is any one of your readers so illiterate as not to have read the Antiquary, there are few memories which are not the better for being from time to time refreshed. My own is not of the best, which is sometimes disadvantageous to me, but not in a case like this. I have frequently read over the Antiquary, again and again, and have always derived much pleasure and amusement from so doing, and that pleasure I hope still again to enjoy.

    J. S–s.

Dr. Euseby Cleaver (Vol. ii., p. 297.).—Your correspondent H. COTTON, Thurles, Ireland, is mistaken with reward to Dr. Euseby Cleaver. He was never Bishop of Cork and Ross. He was Bishop of Ferns and Leighlin, and translated thence to the archbishopric of Dublin about the year 1805. No doubt the transaction will be found in the Registry of Ferns, but I do not know the date of his consecration.

I was acquainted with that good man, and my mother was his first cousin.

    R.S.
    Belgave, Nov. 15. 1850.

Mrs. Partington (Vol. ii., pp. 377. 411.).—In the Rev. Sydney Smith's speech at Taunton, on the Lords' rejection of the Reform Bill, October, 1831, is this passage:

"The attempt of the Lords to stop the progress of reform, reminds me very forcibly of the great storm of Sidmouth, and of the conduct of the excellent Mrs. Partington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824, there set in a great flood upon that town—the tide rose to an incredible height—the waves rushed in upon the houses, and everything was threatened with destruction. In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm, Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit was up; but I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest."

This speech is reprinted in the collected editions of Sydney Smith's Works. Unless an allusion to Mrs. Partington of a prior date to October, 1831, is produced, we may fairly consider that the celebrity of that lady is owing to Sydney Smith.

I doubt if Lord Brougham ever alluded to Mrs. Partington. Certain it is he never made any speech in the House of Commons on the Reform Bill, as he was raised to the peerage some months before that bill was brought forward.

    C.H. COOPER.