Notes and Queries, Number 02, November 10, 1849

"Isti libri liberati sunt canonicis die … anno regni Regis Edwardi septimo"³ (7 Edw. II. A.D. 1314.)

Penes Dominum Priorem; Parabelæ Salomonis; Psalterium cum …

Penes Dominum J. de Bodek.; Epistolæ Pauli…; Quædam notulæ super psalter et liber miraculorum … Mariæ cum miraculis sanctorum.

Sub-priorem; Liber vitæ Sancti Thomæ Martiris.

Penes E. de Ely; Quartus liber sententiarum cum sermo…; Liber Reymundi; Liber de vitiis et virtutibus et pastorale.

Penes R. Pichard; Liber Alquini; Liber Johannis de Tyrington cum Catone et aliis.

Penes Henrici Muchet; Liber de vita Sanctæ Mariæ Magdalenæ et remediarum (?)

Penes Walteri de Yilwilden; Liber S … ligatus in panno ymnaro glosatus cum constitutionibus; Belet ligatus et vita sanctorum.

Penes Ricardi de Queye; Omeliæ Gregorii (?) super Evangelistos ligatæ in nigro corio.

In commune biblia; Decreta; Decretales; Prima pars moralium Job; Liber de abusionibus.

Liber justitiæ; penes Magistrum Adam de Wilburham.

Penes Walteri de Wyth; Liber Innocentii super sacramenta cum Belet et introductione in uno volumine.

Item penes Sup-priorem; Psalterium glosatum duod fuit in custodia Magistri Henrice de Melreth.

Item aliud psalterium glosatum inpignoratum penes Isabellam Siccadona.

Several of these descriptions are highly curious; particularly the last item, which describes one of the "glossed" psalters as being "in pawn," a fact which, in itself, tells a history of the then condition of the house.

The first document, taken in connection with that referred to by Mr. Hunter would seem to establish the existence of a system of interchanging the literary wealth of monastic establishments, and thereby greatly extending the advantages of their otherwise scanty stores. Both are executed with all the legal forms used in the most important transactions, which would support the opinion of their not being special instances: but they are, in either case, curious and satisfactory evidence of the care and caution exercised by the monks in cases where their books were concerned; and one cannot but regret that when the time came that the monasterias were destined to be dissolved, and their books torn and scattered to the winds, no attention was paid to Bale's advice for the formation of "one solemne library in every shire of England."

JOSEPH BURTT

PEDLAR'S SONG ATTRIBUTED TO SHAKSPERE, AND TRADITION CONNECTED WITH SHAKSPERE'S "HAMLET."

The following verses, which would form a very appropriate song for Autolycus, were arranged as a glee for three voices by Dr. Wilson about the year 1667. They are published in Playford's Musical Companion in 1673; in Warren's Collection of Glees and Catches; and in S. Webbe's Conveto Harmonico. The words were, I believe, first ascribed to Shakspere by Clark, in 1824, in his Words of Glees, Madrigals, &c.; but he has not given his authority for so doing. It has been stated that they have since been discovered in a common-place book written about Shakspere's time, with his name attached to them, and with this indirect evidence in favour of their being written by him, that the other pieces in the collection are attributed to their proper writers. The late Mr. Douce, who was inclined to believe the song to have been written by Shakspere, once saw a copy of it with a fourth verse which was shown to him by the then organist of Chichester. The poem is not included in Mr. Collier's edition of Shakspere, nor in the Aldine edition of Shakspere's Poems, edited by the Rev. A. Dyce. Perhaps if you will be good enough to insert the song and the present communication in the "NOTES AND QUERIES," some of your readers may be enabled to fix the authorship and to furnish the additional stanza to which I have referred.

PEDLAR'S SONG

 
From the far Lavinian shore,
I your markets come to store;
Muse not, though so far I dwell,
And my wares come here to sell;
Such is the sacred hunger for gold.
Then come to my pack,
While I cry
"What d'ye lack,
What d'ye buy?
For here it is to be sold."
 
 
I have beauty, honour, grace,
Fortune, favour, time, and place,
And what else thou would'st request,
E'en the thing thou likest best;
First, let me have but a touch of your gold.
Then, come to me, lad,
Thou shalt have
What thy dad
Never gave;
For here it is to be sold.
 
 
Madam, come, see what you lack,
I've complexions in my pack;
White and red you may have in this place,
To hide your old and wrinkled face.
First, let me have but a touch of your gold,
Then you shall seem
Like a girl of fifteen,
Although you be threescore and ten years old.
 

While on this subject, perhaps I may be permitted to ask whether any reader of the "NOTES AND QUERIES" can throw light on the following questionable statement made by a correspondent of the Morning Herald, of the 16th September, 1822.

"Looking over an old volume the other day, printed in 1771, I find it remarked that it was known as a tradition, that Shakspeare shut himself up all night in Westminster Abbey when he wrote the ghost scene in Hamlet."

I do not find in Wilson's Shakspeariana the title of a single "old" book printed in 1771, on the subject of Shakspere.

T.

SIR WILLIAM SKIPWYTH, KING'S JUSTICE IN IRELAND

Mr. Editor,—I am encouraged by the eminent names which illustrate the first Number of your new experiment—a most happy thought—to inquire whether they, or any other correspondent, can inform me who was the William de Skypwith, the patent of whose appointment as Chief Justice of the King's Bench in Ireland, dated February 15. 1370, 44 Edward III., is to be found in the New Fædera vol. iii. p.877.? In the entry on the Issue Roll of that year, p. 458., of the payment of "his expences and equipment" in going there, he is called "Sir William Skipwyth, Knight, and the King's Justice in Ireland."

There was a Sir William Skipwyth, who was appointed a Judge of the Common Pleas in 33 Edward III., and Chief Baron of the Exchequer in 36 Edward III.; and, were it not that Collins, in his Baronetage, followed by Burke, says that he remained Chief Baron till 40 Edward III., in which year he died, I should have had no doubt that the Irish Chief Justice was the same with the English Chief Baron.

The same authority adds that Sir William Skipwyth who was made a Justice of the King's Bench [it should have been of the Common Pleas] in 50 Edward III., and who resigned his office in 11 Richard II., was the eldest son of the Chief Baron. But that authority does not make the slightest allusion to the appointment of the Chief Justice of Ireland.

A suspicion that this last Justice of the Common Pleas is not only the same person as the Chief Justice of Ireland, but also as the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, has arisen in my mind for the following among other reasons.

1. Collins and Burke are wrong in saying that he remained Chief Baron till 40 Edward III. His successor in that office was appointed on October 29. 1365, 39 Edward III.

2. They are further wrong, I imagine, in saying that he continued Chief Baron till his death: for Joshua Barnes, in his History of Edward III., p. 667., says that Skipwyth and Sir Henry Green, the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, were in 1365 arrested and imprisoned on account of many enormities which the King understood they had committed against law and justice; and this relation is corroborated by the fact that Green's successor as Chief Justice was appointed on the same day as Skipwyth's successor as Chief Baron.

3. No proof whatever is given of the Chief Baron's death in 40 Edward III.

I will not trouble you with other grounds of identification which occur to me: but as an answer to my question might "make these odds all even," I sent the "Query" to the "Lost and Found Office" you have established, in the hope that some stray "Note," as yet unappropriated, may assist in solving the difficulty.

EDWARD FOSS.

November 5. 1849.

THE THISTLE OF SCOTLAND

Mr. Editor,—May I ask if any of your contibutors could inform me in an early number, when and on what occasion the Thistle was adopted as the emblem of the Scottish nation? I have looked into many historians, but as yet found nothing definite enough.

R. L.

Paisley, Oct. 29. 1849.

CAPTURE OF THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH

Mr. Editor,—Having noticed the letter of Mr. John Bruce, in your Miscellany, I beg leave to inform him that the ash tree under which Monmouth was taken is still standing on the Woodland estate, now the property of the Earl of Shaftesbury.

I shall be happy at some future day, if it suits your purpose, to collect and send you such particulars as may be gained on the spot respecting it, and the incidents of the capture.

We have still in the Town Hall here the chain in which it is said Jefferies sat at the Bloody Assize.

A. D. M.

Dorcester, 3d Nov. 1849.

[We shall gladly receive the particulars which our Correspondent proposed to collect and forward.]