Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/163

. i. FEB. is, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

131

" Cayley adds The head, after being shown on

either side of the scaffold, was put into a leather bag, over which Sir Walter's gown was thrown, and the whole conveyed away in a mourning coach by Lady Raleigh. It was preserved by her in a case during the twenty-nine years which she survived her husband, and afterwards with no less piety by their affectionate son Carew, with whom it is supposed to have been buried at West Horsley, in Surrey."

This latter statement we know to be wrong, for the register of St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, records the burial of Carew Raleigh on 1 January, 1666 ; and as it would appear that he had charge of the precious relic after his mother's death, it is not, after all, unlikely that the head was, by his desire, interred with his own remains in his father's grave in that church forty-eight years after his father's execution. If this be so, I think that MR. EASTERBROOK will see that the paragraph about which he writes is substantially correct, although it is not very clear as to the way in which the tradition is "handed down from rector to rector,'"' and it is certainly a stretch of imagination to speak of a period of close on half a century as "a few years after- wards."

I have seen the editor of the St. Margaret's Parish Magazine, by whom I am informed that his reason for not inserting the letter which he received was that he did not con- sider the matter one that could be dealt with in its pages. W. E. HARLAND-OXLEY.

C2, The Almshouses, Rochester Row, S.W.

PRIVY COUNCIL UNDER JAMES I. (9 th S. xii- 367, 415). James, writing from Holyrood, 27 March, 1603, continued the Council in " their offices and charges," and in a second letter, dated 28 March, reappointed the Privy Councillors (Nichols's 'Progresses of James I.,' vol. i. p. 121).

On 28 March the Privy Council in London wrote to Lord Eure and the other Commis- sioners at Breame, announcing the death of Elizabeth, and stating that in them "there is or remaineth no further authority than by provisional care to apply our best endeavours for the keeping of the realm in tranquillity and peace." The letter bears the signatures of the following councillors : John Cant., Tho. Egerton, C.S., T. Buckhurst, Notingham, Northumberland, Gilb. Shrewsbury, Will. Derby, E. Worcester, Ro. Sussex, J. Lincolne, Ga. Kildare, Clanricard, T. Howard, Ric. London, Tho. La Warre, Gray, T. Darcy, Ed. Cromwell, Ro. Riche, G. Chandois, William Compton, W. Knowles, Jo. Stanhope, Jo. Fortescue, Ro. Cecill. See Nichols, vol. i. pp. 41-43, and Rymer's 'Fredera,' vol. xvi. p. 493.

On 3 May, when James arrived at Theo- balds on his way to London, he made the following Scotchmen members of the Council : Duke of Lennox, Earl of Mar, Lord Home, Sir George Hume, Sir James Elphingston, and Lord Kinloss ; and of the English nobility, Lord Henry Howard, Thomas, Lord Howard, and Lord Montjoy (Nichols, vol. i. pp. 108-13). Nichols and Rymer will furnish other information. J. A. J. HOUSDEN.

ST. PATRICK AT ORVIETO (10 th S. i. 48). St. Patrick was at Rome in 431, but I do not know that he was ever in contact with Orvieto. The well to which F. C. W. refers was sunk in 1528 by Pope Clement VII., and Benvenuto Cellini designed a medal with a reverse referring to the event. It represented Moses striking the rock, and was inscribed " Ut bibat populus." On tickets of admission to view St. Patrick's Well it is stated : " Questo pozzo e detto di S. Patrizio par analogia alia caverna dello stesso nome che trovasi in Irlanda."

A note (p. 160) in Roscoe's translation of Cellini's ' Memoirs ' gives a better descrip- tion of the work than I could otherwise furnish :

'It was cut through the solid rock to the depth of 265 feet, and 25 ells wide. It has two flights of hanging steps, one above the other, to ascend and descend, executed in such a manner that even beasts of burden may enter ; and by 248 convenient steps they arrive at a bridge, placed over a spring, where the water is laden. And thus, without returning back, they arrive at the other stairs, which rise above the first, and by these return from the well by a passage different to the one they entered."

Si. SwiTHIN.

The well of St. Patrick at Orvieto is, I imagine, not called after St. Patrick the Apostle of the Irish, but takes its name from one of the other St. Patricks. August Pott- bast's catalogue of saints in his ' Bibliotheca Historica Medii JEvi ' is the best list of the kind with which I am acquainted. It con- tains four St. Patricks.

EDWARD PEACOCK.

F. C. W. may find Wright's 'St. Patrick's Purgatory' (1844) of some service in deter- mining whether the well at Orvieto had more than a merely nominal connexion with the saint. Its celebrity would be sufficiently accounted for by the peculiarities of its con- struction and by its magnitude ; for spiral staircases and a width of 46 feet (or 43 according to Baedeker) are somewhat unusual features of a well. The alternative assump- tion, that it is directly connected with St. Patrick, seems to imply that some well