Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/206

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XIL AUG. 28, 1909.

RICHARD II. AT CHESTER. Upon the Recognizance (or Chancery) Rolls of Chester in August, 1398, is enrolled a memorandum of the delivery to the Chamberlain of Chester, by John Cranmere, Yeoman of the King's Wardrobe, of the following articles, used by the King whilst visiting Chester, probably on the installation of John Brughill, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, in the Cathedral Church of St. John, when, Cowper's MS. states, the King entertained many of the prime nobility :

Eleven blankets embroidered with tapestry.

Six gold cushions or pillows (quissyns) for the bed " de serpentz."

A bedhead (testrc) with " le syler " (? silarium canopy).

A counterpane (countrepoint) to match.

Three curtains.

Two " fustians," each of the breadth of six.

A covering " de Medlee," furred with miniver.

A green " canevas " with seven embroideries {bredes).

A " trace " of blue silk.

A " sp'ver " (?) of red silk embroidered with three gold crowns.

Nine red " worstede " blankets.

A blue " canevas " of seven embroideries.

Three " cloth sakkes."

Two red tapestry blankets like the eleven already mentioned.

A green " matras."

R. S. B.

TEMPLE BAR. In The Daily Telegraph of 27 July Mr. Ernest S. Atkinson rightly questions' the accuracy of the inscription on an inkstand added to the Mansion House plate in commemoration of Sir William Treloar's Mayoralty. Referring to Temple Bar, it says " First mentioned in. 1301." This is derived from the grant, 29 Edward I., to Walter le Barbour, quoted by Herbert ('London before the Fire,' iii. 23), Noble ('Memorials of Temple Bar,' 20), and others ; but it is of no value for the purpose for which it ha.s been used. Mr. Atkinson provides an earlier date (1293), the reference occurring in a licence for alienation in mortmain by Henry le Waleys of a messuage in the parish of St. Clement Danes, " extra Barram Novi Templi London."

For the purpose of identifying the western Fleet Street extremity of Sir William Tre- loar's Ward, Farringdon Without, some earlier and more exact reference might have been sought. It is also open to question whether " Barra Novi Templi " was at these dates a boundary mark of the City's jurisdiction named after the adjoining New Temple, or the bar or gate marking the northern limit and principal entrance to the -extra-mural domain of the Knights Templars. ALECK ABRAHAMS.

THOMAS LAKE HARRIS. Some twelve months ago inquiry was made in ' N. & Q.' respecting a biography of T. L. Harris, the founder of the Community of the Brother- hood of the New Life, whose name is familiar to many exclusively on account of the fact that for a time Laurence Oliphant came under the spell of, and lived with, Harris at Brocton, New York State. As the inquiry evoked no response at the time, now that an official life of T. L. Harris, preacher, poet, and mystic, has been printed, the inquirer and other readers of ' N. & Q.' may be interested in the fact. The bio- graphy is written from personal knowledge by Mr. Arthur A. Cuthbert of Birmingham, a disciple of Harris. An acute and capable, but unfriendly critic, in noticing the book, which has not been sent to the press, declares that " Dr. Dowie was a very simple cha- racter in comparison with Thomas Lake Harris." It may be remarked that Harris's ' Lyra Triumphalis,' a slim volume of dithyrambic verse issued in 1891, was dedi- cated to Swinburne ; and that the Poet Laureate some forty years ago, in his almost forgotten volume ' The Poetry of the Period,' alluded to the "exceptional excellence" of Harris's verse, avowing that Swinburne was able to produce " nothing so perfect and gemlike." Mr. Alfred Austin in this book in which, by the way, he speaks of Tennyson's muse as a " Pegasus without wings " deals with Harris's life fairly sym- pathetically, makes it apparent that his mind was exercised on the subject of the Brother- hood, and dwells at considerable length on Harris's achievements as a poet, whose habit, he states, was " to write or dictate while in trance." J. GRIGOR.

14, Crofton Road, Camberwell.

SCARLET PIMPERNEL. I remember hear- ing many years ago (nearly fifty, probably) from an old lady of the yeoman class she being the wife and daughter of farmers farming their own land, which I take to be the true meaning of the word " yeoman " this rime with respect to the scarlet pimpernel :

No heart can think,

No tongue can tell,

The virtue there is

In pimpernel.

The lady in question informed me that she had heard the rime first in her childhood, and she was then well advanced in years. The locality was within ten miles of Tiverton, but I have never heard the rime in this part of the county. FRED. C. FROST, F.S.I. Teignmouth.