Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/333

 i. APRIL 2, 1904.] XOTES AND QUERIES.

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fact that the manor and the most consider- able part of the site of the Abbey of Favers- ham and its demesnes continued in the Crown till the reign of Charles I. Consequently the duties of the office of Yeoman of the Crown related directly to the interests of the Crown. These duties would probably come under the designation of servitium regale, or royal ser- vice, which comprised the rights and pre- rogatives that within a royal manor belonged to the king. These rights, according to Cowel's 'Interpreter,' were generally reckoned to be six : 1. Power of judicature in matters of pro-

2. Power of life and death in felonies and murders.

3. A right to waifs and strays.

4. Assessments.

5. Minting of money.

6. Assize of bread, beer, weights, and measures.

"All these entire Privileges were annex'd," says Cowel, "to some Manors in their Grant from the King, and were sometimes conveyed in the Charters of Donation to religious Houses."

In the third Act of Edward IV., cap. v., as to " what kind of apparel men and women of every vocation and degree are allowed, and what prohibited to wear," it is stipulated that

"no esquire nor gentleman, nor none other under the degrees above rehearsed, shall wear from the said feast [the Purification] any damask or satin, except the menial esquires, sergeants officers of the King's house, ytomtn of the Crown, yeomen of the King's chamber, and esquires, and gentlemen having possessions to the yearly value of a hundred pounds by year, upon pain to forfeit to the King for every default a hundred shillings."

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

From Sir Thomas Smith's little book ' The Commonwealth of England ' I gather that this expression has nothing to do with an office. This treatise, written in 1565, when the author was ambassador in France, as Strype tells us ('Life of the Learned Sir Thomas Smith,' p. 117, London, 1698), is divided into three books, the twenty-third chapter of the first bearing the title 'Of Yeomen,' which contains no mention of any such officer as Yeoman of the Crown. On this authority we may therefore conclude that he did not exist, otherwise he would have been named. When Henry Sayer, of Faversham, is described as having been " mayor and yeoman of the Crown," nothing more is meant than that he had filled the office of mayor and had been by condition a yeoman of the Crown. He might have held

his land directly from the Crown ; if not, the appellation doubtless derived its origin from causes such as Sir Thomas Smith speak* of in the tenth chapter of his third book, where he writes :

"For no man holdeth Land simply free in England, but he or she that holdeth the Crown of England : all others hold their land in fee, that is, upon a faith or trust, and some service to be done to another Lord of a Manner, as superiour, and he againe of an higher Lord, till it come to the Prince, and him that holdeth the Crowne. So that if a- man die, and it be found that hee hath land which hee holdeth, but of whom no man can tell, this is understood to be holden of the Crowne, and in capite." 'The Commonwealth of England,' p. 256, London, 1640.

I take it that a testator in such a case as this might very properly be described as a yeoman of the Crown. JOHN T. CURRY.

Two long articles bearing this title, by the late learned antiquary JOHN GOUGH NICHOLS, were given just forty-three years ago (see 2 nd S. xi. 124, 251). They conclude with these .sentences, which may prove of sufficient information for many of your readers :

" In short, they appear to have been the original bodyguard of the King, before the larger corps of Yeomen of the Guard was established.

"The old statutes of the household referred to,

were those of King Edward III." (1327-77).

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

71, Brecknock Road.

COBWEB PILLS (10 th S. i. 205). The astonish- ingly hardy superstitions relating to the effi- cacy of spider and spider-web swallowing in folk-medicine probably owe their survival, if not their exact origin, to the tradition that a spider spun his web over Christ in the manger, and hid Him from Herod, upon which ensued a superstitious objection to destroying spiders. Speaking of the spider- cure for an ague, Burton, in his 'Anatomic of Melancholy ' (part. ii. sect. v. memb. i. sub- sect, vi.), says :

" Being in the Country in the vacation time, not many years since, at Lindley, in Leicestershire, my Father's house, I first observed this amulet of a, spider in a nut-shell lapped in silk, &c., so applied for an Ague by my Mother ; whom although I knew to have excellent Skill in Chirurgery, sore eyes, aches, &c., and such experimental medicines, as all

the country where she dwelt can witness, yet

among all other experiments, this methought was most absurd and ridiculous till at length, ram- bling amongst authors (as I often do), I found this very medicine in Dioscorides, approved by Matthio- lus, repeated by Aldrovandus, rap. de araiiea, fib. de insect is, I began to have a better opinion of it." Ed. 1893, vol. ii. p. 290.

The web of a spider is in Lincolnshire a sure cure for ague (HardwicTce's Science Gossfa first series, ii. 83). The Glasgow working