Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/381

 10 s. xii. OCT. 16, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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bull of Benedict VIII (1012-24) mentions this church. A fourteenth century Turin MS. published by Urlichs also mentions it, but as destroyed. It was rebuilt in 1640, and it was then that discovery was made of the relics of St. John the Calybite and of other saints deposited there by Formosus, Bishop of Porto, and subsequently Pope. The sarcophagus in the Lateran Museum has this inscription :

+ HIC REQVISCVNT CORPORA S*TOR. MARTYRV YPPOLITI TAVRINI HERCVLANI ATQVE IOHANNIS CALIBITIS FORMOSVS EPS. CONDIDIT.

See Marucchi's ' Basiliques et ^glises de Rome ' (Paris and Rome, 1902), p. 465.

The Bene Fratelli (Fate bene fratelli) are an order of mendicant friars founded by St. John of God, and they obtained the site for a hospital, which they still occupy, together with their rule, in 1571 from St. Pius V. There is no evidence that the Benedictines ever had a hospital on the Isola di San Bartolommeo.

MR. BADDELEY does not say, as MR. HESKETH makes him say, that the hospitals of St. Bartholomew at Chatham and in London were founded by Benedictines. The latter, as he states, and as is well known, was founded by Rahere, an Augus- tinian canon regular.

What is the source of the story about the wonderworking figure in the church at Otford ? JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

WILLIAM GUSH (10 S. xii. 267) painted my father's portrait about 1857 for The Evangelical Magazine ; the portrait is now in the National Portrait Gallery at Charing Cross. As a boy I accompanied my father to the studio, and remember the painter perfectly. The name occurs in the Court Section of the ' London Directory ' this year, and no doubt the representatives of the name are descendants, who will give in- formation. J. SPENCER CURWEN.

MAGNA CHARTA BARONS (10 S. xii. 149, 236). One of these an ancestor William Malet of Curry and Shipton Malet, married Alicia, daughter of Lord Basset, leaving two daughters, Helewise and Mabel. By the former's marriage with a Ppyntz and the latter's with Hugh de Vironia, a direct line male with this Baron might be traced. By Mabel's marriage an interesting link is furnished through the Beauchamps, Barons of Hache, and the Seymours, to Jane, and King Edward VI. between the Magna Charta and our king.

HAROLD MALET, Col.

" CORRECT TO A T " (10 S. xii. 227, 273). I venture to suggest that in this expression T stands for the (Scotch) dialect word tee so well known to golfers as denoting the small cone of earth from which the ball i& driven. Tee in a wider sense means " a mark," " a (fixed) point " ; see ' Dial. Diet.' s.v. "Correct to a point (= tee] "" would be equivalent to the German phrase genau bis aufs Tuttelchen (auf dem i), " correct to a tittle," thus expressing the notion of minute exactness which, according to SIR JAMES MURRAY, is implied in it. It will be useful to compare the expression " that 's the tee," meaning " that is the right thing," recorded in the ' Dial. Diet.' s. lit. T.

Whether this suggestion is worth con- sidering or not, will largely depend on the evidence furnished by the quotations of the word tee now in the hands of the editors of the ' N.E.D.' As to its etymology, it would be hazardous to attempt an explana- tion before the material of the ' N.E.D/ is available. HEINRICH MUTSCHMANN.

University College, Nottingham.

May I suggest that possibly the original form of this saying was " to the crossing of a f," and that the shade of that meaning still hangs about it ? For many genera- tions over-close attention to the minutiae of accurate writing was held to be the index of a " clerk " as distinguished from a " gentleman," or of a man too much im- mersed in larger affairs to waste time or care jon such pettinesses ; and of these the dotting of the t's and the crossing of the t's were singled out as the most frivolous, and most significant of petty pedantry. As late as my boyhood I read a magazine story in which the hero, a rather weak vessel, wrote a letter to his desiree with " all the fa care- fully dotted and the 2's crossed," and was therefore a mark for ridicule.

FORREST MORGAN. Hartford, Conn.

COUNT FlNDLATER AT KARLSBAD (10 S

xii. 269). This may have been James, seventh Earl of Findlater and fourth Earl of Seafield. Born in 1750, he was educated at Oxford and enjoyed a high reputation for Latin scholarship, and especially for his knowledge of Virgil. Succeeding his father in the earldom in 1770, he soon afterwards went to the Continent, where he spent most of his life. His title of Count he may have received after his marriage. "He married at Brussels in 1779," says Anderson in ' The Scottish Nation,' " Christina Teresa, daughter of Joseph, Count Murray of Melgum, baronet