Paris, 1840-50, in 7 vols. 4to, contains any matter additional to that which is found in the Paris edition in 10 vols. folio, 1733-66? I also wish to reverse the question, and ascertain, if I can, whether the last edition has in it all that may be found in the earlier one? CORNUB.

ANCIENT GREEK MANUSCRIPT OF THE GOSPELS. In Bridges's History of Northamptonshire, under the parish of "Loddington," occurs the following curious notice, which, although possessing perhaps more of individual than of general interest, yet the Editor of "N. & Q.," with his accustomed and well-known courtesy, will, I feel sure, permit me to place before his readers, in the hope that some one or other of them may have seen the manuscript referred to, and be able to inform me where it may be found.

In the list of rectors is mentioned a Mr. George Tew, incumbent from 1693 to 1702, of whom Bridges says:

"Mr. Tew, the late incumbent, found, walled up in the chancel, a Greek MS. of three of the Gospels, the Gospel of St. Mark being wanting, conjectured to be about 600 years old. It was communicated by him to Dr. Cumberland, then bishop of the diocese, of whom it was borrowed by Dr. Moore, Bishop of Ely, who, when pressed to return it, said he had mislaid or could not find it. From this circumstance it hath been suspected that the manuscript was much older than it was thought to be, and is perhaps preserved with the books he gave to the University of Cambridge."

Should the MS. have been lodged in the public library of that University, the curators can scarcely be unaware of its existence, and from them I would especially ask the favour of any information they may possess respecting it.

Oxon.

EDMUND TEW, M.A.

P.S. The extraordinary conduct of Bishop Moore in this affair forms, I fear, but one out of many such instances. Some years ago an old friend of mine lent a MS., which he prized very highly, to a church dignitary in this very diocese neither a bishop nor yet a dean; and upon requesting that it might be restored to him, received the very same reply as that given by this good bishop and honourable man to my ancient and worthy but too confiding relative. My old friend is no more, but the MS. has never yet found its way back to the true and lawful owner.

E. T.

by Macaulay to the Earl of Derby," &c. And a parliamentary reporter tells me he thinks he remembers the ph phrase to have been used by Macaulay about 1835. But I do not see it in the volume of speeches which Vizetelly's piracy induced him to publish. Can any one verify his having suggested a phrase which hitherto has been considered either Disraeli's or Lytton's ?* MAKROCHEIR.

INGULPH'S "CHRONICLE." - I shall be greatly obliged to any of your readers who can give me references to articles on books, reviews, or magazines, on the question of the genuineness or spuriousness of Ingulph's Chronicle. CORNUB.

MARTIN DE ASELLO. -I met with the following story in a fragment of a book of the last century, which seemed to be a miscellaneous collection of different pieces. Who was the hero of the story? Or is the whole a mere common-room joke? Martin de Asello engaged a painter to inscribe over his door

"Porta patens esto; nulli claudaris honesto." But the painter mistook the place for the stop, and wrote

"Porta patens esto nulli; claudaris honesto." The pope, riding that way before Martin had corrected his inscription, taking it for professed knavery, ousted him of his bishopric, and put another in his stead, who altered the stop, and added one more line, thus:

"Porta patens esto; nulli claudaris honesto:
Ob unum punctum caruit Martinus Asello."

W. G.

MEDAL OF CROMWELL. - I have before me a bronze medal of Oliver Cromwell nearly as large as a silver crown piece. On the obverse is Cromwell's head, very like that by Simon, but of course inferior; legend, "OLIVARIVS CROMWELL."

Beneath the bust is the artist's name, "I. DASSIER."

On the reverse, a square mausoleum with an arched roof; on the panel is inscribed "ANGLIE sco. ET HIB. PROTECTOR." Around its base are grouped four cherubs, one holding a mirror, another a wreath and a pillar, a third a club and three balls. In the exergue is, "NAT. 3 APRIL, 1603. MORT. 3 SEPT. 1658."

Can you inform me of the date and occasion of the striking of this medal, and what the objects held by the cherubs signify? Also, who I. Dassier was? J. H. M.

MEMORY: ROMAN AND OLD ENGLISH CHARACTERS. - A magistrate remarked at our Quarter Sessions, that he thought it a pity the Commandments on the altar-piece in the chapel of the gaol were not written in Roman characters instead of Old English. The chaplain stated in reply, on the authority of an inspector of prisons, that prisoners were ten times more likely to remember sentences written in characters difficult to be deciphered than in those which were easily read. Can any of your readers confirm or account for the fact so stated by the inspector of prisons? NORFOLK.

PENNANT IN THE ROYAL NAVY. -The tradition in the Isle of Thanet is, that the long streamers at the mainmasts of men-of-war were first used by Admiral Blake. It is known that Van Tromp hoisted a broom at his mast-head, threatening "to sweep the English from the sea." It is said here that Blake replied by hoisting the long-pennant, and called it "a coach-whip to flog the Dutchmen home again." Is there any record of this saying? A. A.

(Of) Poets' Corner.

we call him (the English James III.) meditated coronation in Scotland in 1715-16, and fixed on Scone as the scene. But the battle of Sheriffmuir drove him from Scotland before he could fulfil his wish."

This is incorrect: the coronation did take place. In the Tower of London were shown the swords (of iron), which the present writer has seen; they were destroyed in the fire of the Tower of London. They represented the swords of Justice and Mercy, used at the English coronations. In Black's Guide to Scotland (Edinburgh, 1859, 12mo, p. 252) is this description of Scone:

"Scone Palace, the seat of the Earl of Mansfield, who represents the old family of Stormont, is two and a half miles from Perth, on the left bank of the Tay. It is a large modern building, castellated, and is built upon the site of the ancient palace of the Kings of Scotland. Much of the old furniture has been preserved in the modern house; and among other relics, a bed used by James VI., and another of crimson velvet, flowered, said to have been wrought by Queen Mary when imprisoned in Loch Leven castle. The gallery, which is 160 feet long, occu

"And thou, Dalhousie, the great god of war, Lieutenant-general to the Earl of Mar."

JON. BOURCHIER.

In Charles Lamb's Last Essays of Elia, is the following verse from an old ballad:

"When we came down through Glasgow town,

We were a comely sight to see;
My love was clad in black velvet,
And I myself in cramasie."

What is the name of the ballad, and where is it to be seen? W. J. C.

Will you have the kindness to give me the name of the author of the following:

"The moon, clear shining 'midst the fleecy clouds,
Often I gaze and wonder if her pure
White face be visible to those beloved
But distant friends, I now so long have left.
And then the thought that, even at the time
That I stand gazing, so they too may stand
With eyes upturned to the same silvery orb,
Brings consolation, telling me that though
By seas divided, yet our hearts are joined."

was crowned in 1651, and the Chevalier de St. George (James III.) in 1715. At the north side of the house is a tumulus, termed the Moat Hill, said to have been composed of earth from the estates of the different proprietors who here attended on the kings. On the removal from Dunstaffnage of the famous stone on which the Scottish monarchs were crowned, it was deposited in Scone Abbey, and here it remained until it was taken by Edward I. to Westminster Abbey, where it still forms part of the coronation chair of the British monarchs. The abbey was destroyed at the Reformation by a mob from Dundee, and the only part now remaining is an old aisle, containing a marble monument to the memory of the first Viscount Stormont. The old market cross of Scone still remains, surrounded by the pleasure-grounds which have been substituted in the place of the ancient village."

I wish an answer to two queries:-No doubt John Slezer, in his Theatrum Scotia, gives an exterior view of Scone Palace, in its old state; but is there any representation of the interior of the old coronation hall? And are there any drawings or engravings of the old swords which were in the Tower of London, used at the last Stuart coronation at Scone Palace in 1715? W. H. C.

WALLISH-BILL. - What was a Wallish-bill? Vide Surtees Society, vol. xxiv. pp. 251-253. J. MANUEL.

with a gold cross flory at the ends, between five gold martlets, a kind of swallow without legs; but as heraldry was then unknown, it is extremely doubtful if this or any other bearing was used by that monarch. Arms appear to have been used by the kings of England in the reign of Richard the First, who bore a red shield, charged with three gold lions, which have ever since been deemed to be the arms of England. As early as the time of Edward the First, and probably about a century before, the arms of three saints were always borne on banners in the English army, and on all state occasions-namely, those of St. George, the tutelar saint of this country; of St. Ed. mund, and of St. Edward the Confessor, but neither of those ensigns was deemed to be connected with the sovereignty of England. Richard the Second, however, ❘ being actuated by extraordinary veneration for St. Edward the Confessor, chose him for his patron saint, and impaled his arms with those of England and France; and at the same time, he granted the Confessor's arms to be borne per pale with the paternal coats of two or three of the most eminent noblemen of the day, each of whom was descended from the blood royal. One of the persons so distinguished was Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham and Duke of Norfolk, the right to whose arms and quarterings was indisputably inherited by the Earl of Surrey, but the right to the coat of the Confessor depends upon whether it was granted to Mowbray for life only, or to him and his heirs-a point which has not been ascertained. Conceiving himself, however, entitled to it, Surrey, in marshaling his arms, included it with his other numerous quarterings, and the injustice of construing the act into a treasonable design is still more apparent from other circumstances. Neither Henry the Eighth nor any other monarch after Richard the Second ever used the arms of the Confessor in conjunction with their own, and the statement that Prince Edward then did so with a

DE VERE FAMILY.-May I ask whether any memorial slab in Westminster Abbey marks the resting-place of Aubrey de Vere, the last of the Earls of Oxford, who died in the reign of Queen Anne, and who commanded the Blues at the battle of the Boyne on the side of King William III.? If so, what is the epitaph, crest, and motto (if any inscribed)? Macaulay styles him the noblest subject in England; and in his History gives a beautiful account of the ancient family of De Vere, and of the conspicuous part played by it in the history of England from the days of Stephen to those of Anne: reminding one very much of Gibbon's digression concerning the family of Courtenay of Powderham Castle.

Recently I had the pleasure of joining an archæological expedition; and on the font at Wiston church, in Suffolk, we found the arms of De Vere, and in the first quarter of the shield a harp - supposed to be the bearings of Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, created by Richard II. Marquis of Dublin and Duke of Ireland-his great favourite, whose clay-cold lips, a year after the duke's death, it is said that that unfortunate king kissed, having had the coffin opened for that purpose. On a tomb of the same family, in Castle Hedingham church, in Essex, are found the crest, a "boar," and the motto, "Vero nihil Verius," in allusion to the name.

Shortly after the death of Aubrey de Vere, Robert Harley, the great statesman, was raised to the peerage by Queen Anne by the time-honoured titles of Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, and Baron of Wigmore. The titles again became extinct some fifteen or sixteen years ago: and these earls of the Harley family lie buried at Brampton Bryan in Herefordshire, their ancient abode, near

introduced the label as the proper distinction of his arms from those of his father, so that he appears to have done nothing that he was not authorised by law to do; and even at this moment heralds allow the Confessor's arms to several noble families. It is remarkable that whilst this preposterous accusation was brought against Surrey, he himself bore the royal arms by virtue of his descent from Thomas of Brotherton, the son of Edward the First, whilst various other noblemen in the reign of Henry the Eighth quartered the royal arms of England and France, and two if not more of them, the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Wiltshire, had borne them, not in the inferior position of the third or fourth, but in the first quarter, as their paternal arms with impunity, and as a matter of acknowledged right."

Dr. Nott's Memoir of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, is certainly the best, as he appears to have exhausted nearly every available source of information. Some additional particulars relating to the Earl, which had escaped the researches of Dr. Nott and his later biographers, are supplied in the Life of Surrey prefixed to the Aldine edition of his Poems, edit. 1866.]

timer's Cross, whence their title was taken, and where, in 1461, the great battle was fought which terminated in favour of the Yorkists and placed Edward IV. on the throne of England. His success at Towton Field, near Tadcaster, shortly afterwards, did this most effectually.

How forcibly, on visiting these scenes of carnage, have the lines of Horace presented themselves to my mind:

"Audiet cives acuisse ferrum,

Quo graves Persæ melius perirent,
Audiet pugnas vitio parentum,
Rara juventus."

May I ask another query? How many Earls of Oxford of the family of De Vere were there in unbroken succession? My impression was twenty; but the other day, one of the archæological fraternity stated the number at twenty-two. One is glad to be set right on this as on any point.

Wormingford, near Colchester.

OXONIENSIS.

[We believe there is not any slab in Westminster Abbey to mark the resting-place of Aubrey de Vere; and we are confirmed in that belief, as upon referring to Dean Stanley's interesting Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey, we find no mention of any such slab. If our correspondent will refer to Nicolas's Historic Peerage, by Courthope, he will find that Aubrey de Vere was twentieth and last Earl of Oxford.]

NORMAN LESLIE. - Can you inform me to what part of France Norman Leslie, Master of Rothes (one of the murderers of Cardinal Beaton), was sent as a galley slave, and also where he died?

F. R.

[For his share in the murder of Cardinal Beaton, May 29, 1546, Norman Leslie was forfeited in parliament, August, 1546. After the surrender of the castle of St. Andrews to the French in June, 1547, he was carried with the other prisoners to Rouen in Normandy, where some of them were incarcerated, others detained all the winter in the galleys, especially John Knox, Mr. James Balfour, with his brothers David and Gilbert. (Spotswood's Hist. of Scotland, edit. 1677, p. 88.)

Leslie afterwards entered into the service of the king of France, and gained great reputation in the wars between that monarch and the emperor of Germany. He was killed in an engagement fought between their armies near Can.bray in 1554. Douglas's Peerage, by Wood, ii. 428; and Sir James Melville's Memoirs, edit. 1827, p. 26.]

Replies.

MOTHER SHIPTON.

(1" S. v. 419; 4th S. i. 391.)

Mother Shipton can scarcely be regarded as a myth, although the fact of her existence and the story of her life rest wholly upon Yorkshire tradition. According to that tradition, the place of her birth was on the picturesque banks of the river Nidd, opposite to the frowning towers of Knaresborough Castle, and at a short distance from Saint Robert's Cave-a spot famous for mediæval legends and modern horrore. She first saw the light a few years after the accession of King Henry VII. Her baptismal name was Agatha, and her father's name Sonthiel, which was supposed to be of foreign origin, and to indicate that he had been one of those Breton followers of the new king, who had settled in Yorkshire. With all these romantic accessories, Agatha Sonthiel was content in due time to become the wife of Toby Shipton, an honest artisan, who lived at a village of that name a few miles from the city of York; and under the familiar designation of Mother Shipton she acquired her prophetic fame. It was not until fourscore years after her death, which is said to have happened in 1561, that any account of her extraordinary predictions, and their marvellous fulfilment, was recorded in print.

In 1641 a small 4to tract issued from a London

press, consisting of eight pages, and bearing the following title:

"The Prophesie of Mother Shipton in the raigne of Henry the eighth. Foretelling the death of Cardinal Wolsey, the Lord Percy, and others, as also what should happen in insuing times.

"London, Printed for Richard Lownds at his shop adjoyning to Ludgate. 1641."

It was probably by this publication that the fame of Mother Shipton as a witch or prophetess first became known beyond the borders of her native county. A few years before the breaking out of the Civil War, King Charles I., whilst he was prosecuting his designs against Scotland, was frequently passing through Yorkshire on his way to and from the north. It may be conjectured that during some of these progresses the prophecies of the Yorkshire witch, then rife in the county, had captivated the imagination of one of the followers of the court, who on his return to London concocted the pamphlet which was then committed to the press. It soon became popular, and in the following year two reprints of it appeared, with some additional prophecies; the name of Mother Shipton being strangely associated with those of Ignatius Loyola, Sibylla, Merlin, and other less celebrated seers. In 1643 a third edition was published, which was followed by two others a few years afterwards. I happen to possess a copy of one which appeared in 1648. Its title will suffice to show the general character of the series:

"Twelve strange Prophesies, besides Mother Shipton's, Predicting wonderfull events to betide these years of danger in this climate, whereof some have already come to passe worthy of note.

"Most of them were found in the Reignes of Edward the fourth, and Henry the eighth, Kings of England, and are these which follow, viz.:

1. Mother Shipton's Prophesies.

2. The Blind Man's Prophesie.

3. Ignatius Loyala.

4. Sybilla's Prophesie.

5. Merlin's Prophesie.

6. Otwell Bins' Prophesie.

7. M. Brightman's Prophesie. 8. M. Giftheil's Prophesie.

"With five other Prophesies, never before printed. Whereunto is added the Predictions of Mr. John Saltmarsh, to his Excellency the Lord Fairfax, and the Councell of his Army: as also the Manner of his Death. Now printed and published for the satisfaction of those who have been abused by false and imperfect Copies; with marginal notes on Mother Shipton's Prophesies.

"London, Newly printed for Francis Coles at the signe of the Half-Bowle in the Old-Bayly." Sm. 4to, pp. 8.

An exceedingly rude woodcut, which occupies nearly half the title-page, illustrates Mother Shipton's prediction that Wolsey "should see York, but never come at it." On one side is Wolsey wearing his cardinal's hat, standing at the top of Cawood Castle, looking towards the towers of York Minster, which are seen rising on the opposite side of the print. In the centre is the grotesque figure of the prophetess, with her hooked nose, her staff in one hand, the other raised with extended finger pointing to the cardinal. This, I presume, is the woodcut which Mr. Halliwell has copied in his account of the manuscripts in the Plymouth library.

The popular interest in the Yorkshire witch and her predictions survived the Restoration. In 1662 and 1663 the tracts already described were reprinted with some additional matter, which was increased with each edition; but hitherto no at

tempt had been made to introduce any account of the personal history of Mother Shipton. It was reserved for the notorious Richard Head, the author of The English Rogue, Proteus Redivivus, and other works of a loose description, to invent her biography, and give to the world a new version of her prophecies. In 1667 he issued from the London press the first edition of

"The Life and Death of Mother Shipton; being not only a true Account of her strange Birth; the most im

portant passages of her life; but also all her Prophesies, now newly collected, and historically explained, from the time of her birth, in the reign of King Henry the seventh, until this present year 1667. Containing the most im portant passages of State during the reign of these Kings and Queens of England following, viz. Henry the Eighth, Edward the Sixth, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, King

James, King Charles the First, King Charles the Second. "Strangely preserved amongst other writings belonging to an old Monastry in Yorkshire, and now published for the information of posterity." London, 4to.

The author's reticence as to the name of the "old monastery in Yorkshire" in which the original MS. was preserved, is sufficiently suspicious; but he lets the cloven foot plainly appear in the postscript to his preface, in which he desires the courteous reader "to pass over some seeming impossibilities in the first sheet, allowing the author licentia poetica in her description, and some actions performed in her minority; and only to weigh the more serious part of her prophesies." The fact is, that the whole of Head's book is pure fiction. He has rejected the traditional prophecies contained in the early tracts, which from their local colour might be supposed to have some foundation in truth, and has substituted for them a long series of predictions which he ascribes to Mother Shipton, but which, it is obvious, are his own ingenious contrivances to answer equally ingenious interpretations. Nevertheless, this production has been accepted by the popular taste as the authentic history of the Yorkshire witch, and has been reprinted in every variety of form, and sold as a chap-book in all parts of the kingdom.

Drake, the historian of York, who lived a century and a half ago, in his memoir of Wolsey as fifty-seventh Archbishop of York, observes that this prelate was never at York, though he came so near to it as Cawood; which makes good a

prophecy of Mother Shipton, esteemed an old witch in those days, who foretold he should see York, but never come at it.

"I should not have mentioned this idle story" (he adds), " but that it is fresh in the mouths of our country people at this day; but whether it was a real prediction, or raised after the event, I shall not take upon me to determine. It is more than probable, like all the rest of these kind of tales, the accident gave occasion to the story." (See "Eboracum," p. 450.)

Mr. Hargrove, in the first edition of his History of Knaresborough, published nearly a century ago, notices the traditionary prophecies of the famous Yorkshire sibyl, Mother Shipton, as being still

familiar to the inhabitants of her native town.

Head, at the close of his history, gives a rude representation of a woman upon her knees with her hands joined as if in prayer, which he pretends was taken from a monument erected to the memory of Mother Shipton at Clifton, about a mile from the city of York. Not many years ago a sculptured stone was standing near Clifton, on the high road leading from York to the village of Shipton, which was universally called by the name of Mother Shipton. But it was undoubtedly the figure of a warrior in armour, much mutilated, which had been a recumbent monumental statue, and was most probably brought from the neighbouring abbey of St. Mary, and placed upright as a boundary stone. It has lately been removed to the museum of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society.

THE COMYNS OF BADENOCH.

(4th S. i. 563, 608; ii. 23.)

R. D.

I have been much interested by HERMENTRUDE'S extracts from the records, and, as requested, beg to reply to that lady's queries to the best of my ability, though at present out of reach of many authorities. First, as to Admorus, the grandson (by his son John) of Bruce's great rival, I transcribe the following from Mr. Riddell's Peerage and Consistorial Law, 1842. (Appendix, p. 1045, note) :

"The last fullest notice of the principal m le Comyn line of Badenagh, the most powerful family i: Scotland before the Douglases, and which threw off so many distinguished cadets, including the Comyns, Earls of Meneteth, the Comyns Earls of Buchan (afterwards represented by the English Beaumonts, who took the title, and from whom Henry IV. sprung), the Comyns, Barons of Kil. bride, who had also large estates in England, &c. &c. may be supplied by a mandate or order of Edward II. in 1315, wherein, upon a narrative of the faithful adherence of bone memorie Johannes Comyn, filius Johannis Comyn dudum defuncti,' to himself and Edward I., and that his Scottish lands had been laid waste and destroyed by the 'rebels' in Scotland, he in consequence extends the possession of certain English manors, granted to the former, 'quamdiu nobis placuerit, - Margarete que fuit uxor prefati Johannis'-in subsidium sustentationis sue, et Admori filii eorundem Johannis et Margarete." - See Rotulorum Originalium in Curia Scaccarii Abbreviatio, vol. i. pp. 209-10.