Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/92

72 illustration how one writer follows another blindly, without testing his statements. There is a remarkable instance of this, where such authorities as Bishop Stubbs and Mr. Horace Round have gone wrong, in the matter of the Grocer-Aldermen of Richard II.'s reign, which I examined at length in The English Historical Review for July, 1907. A similar case is that of Canning's first constituency, which is almost invariably wrongly given. Copies of a little pamphlet (printed for private circulation) dealing with this point are to be seen in the British Museum and Bodleian Libraries.

(10 S. ix. 502).—The following report from the proceedings of the House of Lords of Tuesday, the 15th inst., confirms the statement of the official letter I received from the Home Office, dated the 19th of June, that "the Union Jack is to be regarded as the National Flag, and may be used generally by British subjects on land," as well as the further intimation I received, also official, that the Royal Standard, being the personal flag of the Sovereign, cannot be flown except with His Majesty's permission. It is good to know that this question, so long agitated, is now finally settled:

(10 S. x. 30).—In 1642 Milton published 'Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus,' which evoked a severe and extremely personal diatribe from an anonymous critic. This straightway prompted the poet to the production of an elaborate reply, which he entitled 'An Apology against a Pamphlet call'd a Modest Confutation of the Animadversions upon the Remonstrant against Smectymnuus.' Having pointed out that his critic spends the first part of his attack "not in confuting, but in a reasonlesse defaming of the book," the apologist proceeds to consider the grievous personalities in the indictment. He holds that his assailant knows nothing of him further than "his owne conjecture," and presently he writes as follows:—

In the second edition of 'The Life of John Milton,' by Dr. Charles Symmons, it is said on p. 57 that "a son of Bishop Hall is supposed to have been the immediate advancer of the charge."

(10 S. ix. 430, 477; x. 33).—The original of Adam de Gurdon's charter cited by White is in Magdalen College, Oxford, from which it appears that the "place" given by him to the Priory of Selborne was not for a recreation ground, but in order that the convent might there hold the market which they had by the gifts of King Henry III., and might build houses and shops upon it. See the 'Calendar of Charters relating to Selborne,' printed by the Hampshire Record Society in 1891, p. 64.

(10 S. x. 29).—I do not think that any such word is to be found in any of the Selborne charters preserved in Magdalen College.

(10 S. ix. 285).—I quite agree with C. C. B.'s remarks as to the futility of giving a wider outer margin at the expense