Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/93

 10* s. i. JAN. -23, loot.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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full of guilded hinges and nayles." And Anthony Wood in his ' Athense Oxonienses,' 1817, vol. iii. col. 301, says :

" After the Restoration of King: Charles II. Ireton's body with that of Oliver Cromwell was taken up [i.e., from their tombs in Henry VII.'s Chapel in Westminster Abbey], on Saturday, 26 Jan., 1660, and on Monday night following were drawn in two several carts from Westminster to the Red Lyon in Holbourn, where they continued that evening. The next morning the carcass of Joh. Bradshaw, president of the high court of justice (which had been with great solemnity buried in St. Peter's Church at Westminster, 22 Nov., 1659), was carried in a cart to Holbourn also ; and the next day following that (which was the 30th January, on which day King Charles I. was beheaded in 1648) they were drawn to Tyburn on three several sledges, followed by the universal outcry of the people. Afterwards they being pulled out from their coffins, were hanged at the several angles of that triple tree, where they hung till the sun was set. After which they were taken down, their heads cut off (to be set on Westminster Hall) and their loathsome trunks thrown into a deep hole [italics are mine] under the gallows, where they now remain."

The deep hole is suggestive of an improbability that the remains were disinterred by relatives or partisans, for some time, at all events, afterwards. J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL.

DR. FURNIVALL will find two or three columns devoted to this subject in ' Old and New London,' iv. 546-8. I would also refer him to an interesting article which appeared in Chambers' s Journal of 23 February, 1856, bearing the title ' A Historical Mystery? It is devoted to a consideration of the claims of the various places where Cromwell's body is said to have been buried. Naseby Field, Red Lion Square, Westminster Abbey, Hunt- ingdon, and the river Thames, all pass under review, but the writer opines : " Where he was really buried is a question that has never yet [sic], and probably never will be satis- factorily answered." JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

CAPSICUM (9 th S. xii. 449). I should have thought the Capsicum annuum came into Europe from the East vid the Levant, some time pefore the Spaniards discovered it also growing in the West Indies. But surely "chillies" and the powder produced by crushing the dried pods were known to Home in the time of the Caesars. The Hindoos knew it as gas murridge, the Javanese as lombok t and the Malays as chabai.

THORNE GEORGE.

BISHOP WHITE KENNETT'S FATHER (9 th S ix. 365, 455 ; x. 13). Hasted's ' History of Kent,' folio edition, vol. iii. p. 404, states that Basil Kennett was A.M. of the University

of Dublin. Inquiring of the Registrar, I am assured that Basil Kennett's name cannot be
 * raced in any of the lists.

The name Basil is probably derived from Dixwell, 1622, created a baronet 1627, died 641. A Richard Kennett was mayor of Folkestone the year that Basil Dixwell succeeded to the lordship, namely, 1622, and again in 1627. May he not have been Bishop White Kennett's grandfather ?
 * he lord of the manor of Folkestone, Basil

R. J. FYNMORE.

Sandgate, Kent.

FLAYING ALIVE (9 th S. xii. 429, 489; 10 tb ... i. 15). There is an interesting story about }he skin of a robber in " My Sayings and Doings, with Reminiscences of my Life. An Autobiography of the Rev. William Quekett, M.A., Rector of Warrington " (Kegan Paul & Co., 1888), p. 117. Mr. Quekett was one day (presumably before 1854, when he was ap- pointed rector of Warrington) with his brother, Prof. Quekett, at the College of Surgeons. Whilst they were together the latter received a letter which contained an enclosure " which looked like part of the bottom of an old shoe, of the thickness of half-a-crown, of a dark colour, elastic, and with the markings of wood upon it." The letter was from a churchwarden of the parish of East Thurrock, in Essex, who wanted the professor to tell him, if possible, what the substance was, without having any par- ticulars of its history. Having washed it and cut a thin slice, he discovered under the microscope that it had all the structure of human skin, and on more minute examination that it was the " skin of a light-haired man, having the hair of a sandy colour." He wrote to the churchwarden, telling him of the result of his examinations. The latter replied that he (the professor) had "proved the truth of a great tradition which had existed for years in East Thurrock."

' On the west door of the church there had been for ages an iron plate of a foot square, under which they said was the skin of a man who had come up the river and robbed the church. The people nad flayed him alive, and bolted his skin under an iron plate on the church door as a terror to all other marauders. At the restoration of the church, which was then going on, this door had been removed, and hence he had been able to send the specimen."

It appears to have been assumed that the marauder who had been skinned was a Dane. Mr. W. Quekett had a bit of the skin fixed as a specimen for the microscope, and wrote on the slide, "This is the skin of a Dane who, with many others, came up the river Thames and pillaged churches. Caught