Various

“ In 1830 there died in London, at the eastern extremity, called the World's End, an Irishman, aged one hundred and eleven, named Gibson, whose father, a Scotchman, he told me, served under the Duke of Monmouth at the battle of Sedgemore in July, 1685, and afterwards, in July, 1690, under William, at the Boyne. Supposing, as we well may, the father to have been born about 1660, in 1830, before the son's decease, the two successive lives thus embrace one hundred and seventy years. ”

“ I believe that Petty Cury signifies the Little Cookery. See a note in my Annals of Cambridge, vol. i. p. 273.
C. H. COOPER.
Cambridge, July 12. 1851.
To those who are familiar with the Form of Cury, edited by Dr. Pegge, no explanation can be necessary for the name of this street, or rather lane. It seems, indeed, strange that any one who calls himself a Cambridge man should have failed to discover that it was the peculiar quarter of the cooks of the town; as we in London have our Poultry named from the Poulters (not Poulterers, as now corruptly designated) who there had their shops. ”

“ David, who had married the king's daughter, now began to counterplot, in which he was quite successful; for Henry, who had come to release Griffith, by special contract with his brother, took him, with his wife Senena, and his son Owen, with him to London, and imprisoned them in the Tower, in attempting to escape from whence, two years afterwards, Griffith lost his life. Such is a brief outline of all that is known of Senena, who is undoubtedly the Sidanen of Munday, and whose name is variously written Sina, Sanan, Sanant, and in the Latin chronicle Senena. ”

“ The poet then proceeds to speak of the indignation of the well-robed bishops, the monks, friars and priests; and in the course of the composition he makes some strong animadversions on the luxurious living of the churchmen, stating that formerly the friars were preachers, who possessed no wealth, and went about on foot with nothing but a staff; but that they now possessed horses, and frequented banquets," &c. &c.—Page 687., notes to A Poem to another's Book, by John of Kentchurch; from the collection of Thomas ap Jevan of Tre'r Bryn, made about 1670. ”

“ He still enjoys a high degree of popularity, in the legendary stories of the principality, as a powerful magician. There is in the possession of Mr. Scudamore, of Kentchurch, an ancient painting of a monk, supposed to be a portrait of John of Kent; and as the family of Scudamore is descended from a daughter of Owen Glendowr, at whose house that chieftain is believed to have passed in concealment a portion of the latter part of his life, it has been supposed that John of Kentchurch was no other than Owen Glendowr himself," &c. &c.—Page 676., note to the poem on The Names of God. ”

“ He was not educated either in Oxford or Cambridge; having been a member of the society of Stationers in London. I think it is most probable that he was brother to Abraham Holland, who subscribes his name as 'Abr. Holland alumnus S. S. Trin. Coll. Cantabr.' to some copies of Latin verses on the death of John, second Lord Harrington, of Exton, in the Heroologia; which Abraham was the author of a poem called Naumachia, or Holland's Sea-Fight, Lond. ”

“ Respecting John of Kent there is but little else known than may be found in Coxe's Monmouthshire, and Owen's Cambrian Biography, sub "Sion Cent." There is, however, a tradition in this neighbourhood that he was born at Eglwys Ilan, in the county of Glamorgan; and the road is shown by which he went to Kentchurch, in Herefordshire. ”

“ Murray is now actuated by a spirit of patriotism, or of moral responsibility under the remembrance that "charity begins at home," we neither know nor care; since our "home-staying" friends, as well as all who visit us, will benefit by the new direction which his energy has taken. Among the first fruits of this we have Murray's Handbook for Modern London, which did not need the name of our valued contributor MR. PETER CUNNINGHAM at the foot of its preliminary advertisement to show the mint in which it was coined ”

“ Bishop Jewel, in his celebrated sermon preached at Paul's Cross, quotes the following argument as used by Gerson, sometime Chancellor of Paris:
"There is but one only God; ergo, all nations throughout the world must pray to Him in one tongue."
The editor of the Parker Society's edition of Jewel cannot discover the argument in the works of Gerson; but if any of your readers can point out where it may be found, I shall be much obliged.
N. E. R. (a Subscriber) .
71. Inscription in Ely Cathedral. ”

“ Mistake as to an Eclipse (Vol. iv., p. 58.) .
—From your correspondent's mention of it, I should have supposed Casaubon meant that the astronomers had been mistaken in the calculation of an eclipse. But the matter is of another kind. In the lunar eclipse of April 3, 1605, two observers, Wendelinus and Lansberg, in different longitudes, made the eclipse end at times far more different than their difference of longitudes would explain. The ending of a lunar eclipse, observed with the unassisted eye, is a very indefinite phenomenon. ”

“ Llywelyn, as has been shown, had two sons, Griffith and David, the first and eldest of whom, being a turbulent prince, was set aside by his father at a solemn assembly of Cambrian lords, in 1238, and David was elected to succeed his father. ”

“ The Devil's Knell.
—In the Collectanea Topographica, vol. i. p. 167., is the following note:
"At Dewsbury, Yorkshire, there is a bell called 'Black Tom of Sothill:' the tradition is, that it is as expiatory gift for a murder. One of the bells, perhaps this one, is tolled on Christmas-eve as at a funeral, or in the manner of a passing-bell: and any one asking whose bell it was, would be told that it was the devil's knell. The moral of it is, that the devil died when Christ was born. ”

“ As I am much interested in the above family, which I know to have existed at Norwich, or the vicinity, for a century or more, and have reason to think was one of some consequence, will you, through the medium of your useful columns, allow me to ask some of your intelligent correspondents who reside in that neighbourhood the following Queries?
1. Is anything known of the family of the late Sir William Bensley farther back than his father, Thomas Bensley? Sir William was born in the county of Norfolk, and at an early age entered the navy ”

“ In the Life prefixed to a corrected edition of Jarvis's translation, published by Miller, 1801, it is stated to be April 23, 1616; and it is added:
"It is a singular coincidence of circumstances, that the same day should deprive the world of two men of such transcendent abilities as Cervantes and Shakspeare, the latter of whom died in England on the very day that put an end to the life of the former in Spain."
Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, in his Life of his uncle, the poet, remarks on his decease on the anniversary of the death of Shakspeare, but makes no allusion to the double anniversary ”

“ Baskerville entertained peculiar opinions on religious subjects. There was a rumour of some efforts having been made to deposit his remains in one of the church burial grounds, but they were not successful. A year or two ago, while in Birmingham, a snuff-box was shown me, on the lid of which a portrait of Baskerville was painted, which fully agreed with a description of his person given me many years previously by one who had known him. ”

“ On the other hand, if the chronicle was attached to the register of births, &c., it may have shared the too common fate of early registers; for, when an order of 1597 directed the clergy to transcribe on parchment the entries made in the proper registers since the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, they seem to have generally interpreted it as a permission to make away with the older registers, although there are cases in which the proper books are still preserved. ”

“ The first four strokes or units were cut diagonally by the fifth, and taking the first and last of these strokes we readily obtain V, or the Roman five; but as the natural systems of arithmetic are decimal, from the number of fingers, it is most probable that the tens were thus marked off, or by a stroke drawn across the last unit thus X, whence we obtain the Roman ten: these tens were repeated up to a hundred, or the second class of tens, which were probably connected by two parallel lines top and bottom [C] ;, which would be the sign of the second class of tens, or hundreds ”

“ Oxford.
78. Did Bishop Gibson write a Life of Cromwell?
—Mr. Carlyle, in treating on the biographies of Oliver Cromwell, says that the Short Critical Review of the Life of Oliver Cromwell, by a gentleman of the Middle Temple, was written by a certain "Mr. Banks, a kind of a lawyer and playwright," and that the anonymous Life of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, impartially collected, &c., London, 1724, which Noble ascribes to Bishop Gibson, was by "one Kember, a dissenting minister of London." ”

“ FIRST PANORAMA.
(Vol. iv., p. 54.)
I did not speak of my own recollection of Girtin's panorama; my memory cannot reach so far back. It was my father who does perfectly remember Girtin's semicircular panorama. I think the mistake must be with H. T. E. Some years back a large collection of Girtin's drawings and sketches were sold at Pimlico; my father went to see them, and was delighted to find among them some of the original sketches for this panorama, which he immediately recognised and bought. ”

“ It does not appear, however, that his application to the authorities had the desired effect; for it will be remembered that Archbishop Parker's Bible was now in the field, and the Queen's Secretary, Sir William Cecil, was compelled to act with caution. A curious letter, addressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London to Sir William Cecil, concerning the extension of Bodley's privilege, is printed from the Lansdown MS. No. 8. (Art. 82.) , in Letters of Eminent Literary Men, edited by Sir Henry Ellis for the Camden Society. ”

“ Statue of Charles II. (Vol. iv., p. 40.) .
—The following passage is from Hughson's History of London, vol. ii. p. 521.:
"Among the adherents and sufferers in the cause of Charles II. was Sir Robert Viner, alderman of London. After the Restoration the worthy alderman, willing to show his loyalty and prudence, raised in this place [i. e. the Stock's Market] the statue above mentioned. The figure had been carved originally for John Sobieski, king of Poland, but by some accident was left upon the workman's hands. ”

“ The Close, Exeter, July 28. 1851.
"The Right divine of Kings to govern wrong" (Vol. iii., p. 494.) .
—The same idea as that conveyed in this line is frequently expressed, though not in precisely the same words, in Defoe's [126] Jure Divino, a poem which contains many vigorous and spirited passages; but I do not believe that Pope gave the line as a quotation at all, or that it is other, as far as he is concerned, than original. The inverted commas merely denote that this line is the termination of the goddess's speech. ”

“ How true is the poetical image of the rack as [122] the last object of dissipation! the expiring evidence of combustion! the lingering cloudiness of solution!
Replies to Minor Queries. Pseudo MSS.—The Devil, Cromwell and his Amours.
—It is too bad! In Vol. iii., p. 282., there is a good page and a half taken up with a verbatim extract from Echard, which has either been alluded to or quoted by every writer on Cromwell from Echard's time down to a few months ago, when it appeared in Chambers's Papers for the People, No. 11. Again, in Vol. ”

“ Nelson's Coat (Vol. iii., p. 517.) .
—The recognition of the coat Nelson wore at Trafalgar depends on its fulfilling a detail in the following fact. The present Captain Sir George Westphal was a midshipman on board the Victory, and was wounded on the back of the head: he was taken into the cockpit, and placed by the side of Nelson. When Westphal's wound was dressed, nothing else being immediately available, Nelson's coat was rolled up and used as a support to Westphal's head. Blood flowed from the wound, and, coagulating, stuck the bullion of one of the epaulettes to the bandage ”

“ The following extracts are from notes appended [by the editors] to some poems of John a Kent which are published amongst the "Iolo MSS." by the "Welsh MSS. Society."
"... John of Kent, as he is called, is said to have been a priest at Kentchurch in Herefordshire, on the confines of Wales, about the beginning of the fifteenth century. ”

“ And in another place (p. 65., folio; vol. i. p. 136., 8vo.) , he gives an extract relating to Day, Bishop of Chichester:—
"Sed Ricardus Cicestrensis, (ut ipse mihi dixit) non subscripsit."
Hence the Register would seem to have been a sort of chronicle, kept by the rector of Petworth; and it does not appear whether it was or was not in the same volume with the register of births, marriages, and deaths. ”

“ London: GEORGE BELL, 186. Fleet Street.
Now ready, Third Series, also New Editions of the First and Second Series, price 7s. 6d. each.
PLAIN SERMONS, addressed to a Country Congregation. By the late Rev. EDWARD BLENCOWE, Curate of Teversal, and formerly Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford.
"Their style is simple, the sentences are not artfully constructed, and there is an utter absence of all attempt at rhetoric. The language is plain Saxon language, from which 'the men on the wall' can easily gather what it most concerns them to know." ”

“ The earliest engraving of "the King at the Stock's Market" may be seen in Thomas Delaune's Present State of London, 12mo. 1681.
EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.
Serius, where situated? (Vol. iii., p. 494.) .
—The Serius, now Serio, rises in the chain of mountains in the south of the Valteline, between the lakes Como and Ixo: it flows through a valley called the Val Seria, passes near Bergamo and Cremona, and falls into the Adda a little before that river joins the Po.
J. M. (4)
Corpse passing makes a Right of Way (Vol. iii., pp. 477. 507. 519.) . ”