Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/397

 10 s. xii. OCT. 23, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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M.P.'s FOB LONDON, 1404. In my ' Aldermen of London ' (p. 270) I have stated erroneously that there is " no return extant " of the members for the City of London in this Parliament. They are not recorded in any printed list, and by a curious coincidence both Dr. Sharpe while preparing his list of members for the City for his ' London and the Kingdom,' and myself when engaged in similar research, over- looked the notice in Letter-Book I of the Corporation records (fo. xxxii. b). The oversight has now been rectified by Dr. Sharpe in his Calendar of that Letter-Book. The names are John Wodecok and William Brampton, Aldermen, and Alan Everard and Robert Haxtone, commoners.

Wodecok was Alderman of Cripplegate, and Brampton of Bridge Ward ; Everard was subsequently Alderman of Broad Street. Haxtone was a grocer, and Warden of that Company in 1404.

My friend Mr. Wylie, who is a most careful and accurate writer, has made a strange error with regard to this Parliament. He states in his ' History of England under Henry IV.' (vol. i. p. 480) that in this Parliament " the number of boroughs

represented fell to 5 viz., Derby,

Rochester, Grimsby, Lincoln, and Scar- borough." It is true that these are the only boroughs whose returns to the Parlia- ment of 1404 are recorded in the official Blue-book, but the inference that no others made returns was a generalization which, as a matter of logic, the premises did not warrant, and the discovery of this return for London disposes of it altogether as a tenable proposition. There are many later Parliaments for which some of the returns are missing, though not to so large an extent. I should not have taken notice of this error were it not that Mr. Wylie' s authority with regard to this period is so weighty that any obiter dictum of his would naturally be accepted as almost decisive. ALFRED B. BEAVEN.

Leamington.

BURTON'S ' PHILOSOPHASTER ' : ITS SCENE. A hasty reader might suppose the town of Osuna in Andalusia to have been chosen at random as the site of the university in Spain where the action of this comedy is set. But Osuna possessed a university at the time when ' Philosophaster ' was written ; the University is mentioned in a book which is quoted in ' The Anatomy of Melancholy ' ; and Burton's own copy of the book, marked with his pen, is preserved

in the Bodleian Library. See the account of Osuna in Cyprianus Eichovius's ' Delicise Apodemicae et Index Viatorius, Hispanise indicans Itinera ....,' &c., Cologne, 1609. Burton refers to this work in ' Democritus to the Reader ' (p. 38, ed. 1624) :

"Cyprian Echouius [sic] a Spanish Chorographer, aboue all other Citties of Spaine commends Barcino [misprinted in 6th ed. " Borcino,'" and so in subse- quent editions], in which there was no begger, no man poore, &c. but all rich and in good estate, and hee giues the reason, because they were more Religious then their neighbours."

The margin has " Delitijs Hispanise Anno- 1604" (sic), followed by a Latin quotation, which an examination of the original source shows to be compounded from two different passages of the ' Delicise,' the first part being taken from 11. 6 seqq. of p. 37, the latter from 11. 31 seqq. of p. 36. Eichovius does not assert (as might be inferred from Burton's text and the marginal Latin) that the citizens as a body were religious, but makes this statement of " Sacerdotes & omnes, qui rerum sacrarum curam gerebant."

EDWARD BENSLY. Aberystwyth.

GIBBON'S FATHER AND MOTHER. The following entries copied from the parish registers of St. Christopher near the Stocks, London, record the marriages of the uncle and aunt and of the parents of Edward Gibbon (1737-94), the celebrated historian:

" 1734, July 2. The Revd. Edmund Tew of Sabridgworth in ye County of Hartford, widower, and Barbara Gibbon of Putney in Surrey, Spinr. Licence. W. Law."

" 1736, June 3. Edward Gibbon, junr. Esqr. of Putney in ye County of Surry, Batchelor, and Judith Porten of ye same Spinster were married by Licence, by Willm Law."

William Law was his father's tutor, and author of the ' Serious Call.' LIBRARIAN. Public Library, Wandsworth.

" BOSH." (See 3 S. viii. 106, 148 ; 5 S. i. 389; ii. 53, 478; iii. 75, 114, 173, 257, 378 ; 8 S. ix. 324, 418 ; x. 55.) My only reason for referring to the origin of this much-discussed word is that I have, I believe,, an entirely new suggestion to make. I shall not here discuss the merits or demerits of the various derivations that have already been put forward. But with regard to the statement made by MR. T. J. BUCKTON (3 S. viii. 106) and H. A V O. (5 S. iii. 75), that the word is simply Turkish, bosh meaning empty in that language, I should like to observe that Prof. Skeat is perfectly right in asking how and when, in that case, the word came into English from the Turkish. Moreover,