Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/121

 iv. JULY29,1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES. thus from Capt. Sherer's'Notes and Reflec- tions during a Ramble in Germany ': " The loved hour of repose is striking. Let us come to the sunset tree." The poem beginning " For the strength of the hills we bless Thee" is Mrs. Hemans's 4 Hymn of theVaudois Mountaineers in Times of Persecution,' and is included in the 'Scenes and Hymns of Life,' which she dedicated to Wordsworth in 1834. THOMAS BAYNE. "PELFRY" USED BY JOHNSON (10th S. ii. 267).—The other day I noticed the_query by DR. MURRAY under this head, which no one appears to have answered. Allow me to suggest that Pegge inadvertently wrote " pelfry " for palfry, a word which occurs in Johnson's 'Diary' under date 17 August, 1782. DR. GATTY inserted a query respecting this at 8th S. vii. 227, and I quoted in reply at p. 257 the editorial suggestion at 3"1 S. xi. 177 that what Johnson really wrote was "pastry," the long s being mistaken for I, and the t for '. W. T. LYNN. KNIGHTS TEMPLARS (10th S. iii. 467 ; iv. 10, 34).—Having had occasion to investigate the history of the religious and monastic institu- tions of mediaeval Nottingham, 1 found some slight evidence of the Templars, such as may interest the MARQUIS D'ALBON. In the printed Close Rolls is calendared a note to the fol- lowing effect, under date 3 September, 1213:— " King John to the Sheriff of Nottingham. Know ye that we have given and granted to the brethren of the Military Order of the Temple the service of Eustace de Lowdham, clerk, to wit, the rent that he was wont to render us yearly for his house that he held of us, in the parish of St. Mary, under the gaol in Nottingham, and that house shall be their free hospice in that town. And therefore we order thee to cause them to have full seisin thereof with- out delay." The gaol mentioned was the county gaol, situate on the crest of the town cliff, while the Marsh was, and is, a street skirting the base of the latter, hence the description " under the gaol." In all probability the house or hospice, like many another Nottingham tenement of the period, was merely a cave in the sand rock. However, we are not to understand that the Templars had an estab- lishment in Nottingham, but merely that they were to have one house in the town, as in other towns, free from taxes, &c. This was one of their privileges. I understand that when the order of Templars was dissolved in 1307-8 their possessions were largely granted to the Hos- pitallers. This seems to explain a note in the accounts of the Nottingham chamber- lains for 1499-1500, wherein entry is made of an item of "6d. paid to the Prior of St. John of Jerusalem in England for the free rent of a little cellar in the Marsh this year." At the Reformation the Hospitallers were the last important order dissolved; and as they resolutely refused to renounce allegiance to Rome, a special Act was obtained to make them, 32 Henry VIII. (1540-1). This Act had doubtless taken effect, and the whole pro- perty of the order become vested in the Crown, before 1543-4, in which year the accounts of the town chamberlains include an item of 6d. paid " to William Monk, the king's bailiff, for a house in the Narrow Marsh, sometime belonging to St. John's." A. STAPLETON. 244, Radford Road, Nottingham. BLACK AND YELLOW THE DEVIL'S COLOURS (10th S. iv. 10).—Satan's colour, not only in rerum natura, but in actual art, is black, symbolizing darkness and evil, falsehood and error. He is so represented in the ' Book of Kells' in a temptation of our Lord (West- wood, ' Anglo-Saxon and Irish MSS.'). The illuminators of the Middle Ages represent even Christ Himself in black drapery when wrestling against the Spirit of Evil. In the Laurentian MS. of Rabula (A.D. 587) there is an extraordinary representation of the demoniacs of Gadara, just delivered from their tormenting spirits, who are fluttering away in the form of little black humanities of mischievous expression. They are also black in the only instance known to Father Martigny of a representation of the miracle of the healing of the demoniac. (See the Rev. Rich. St. John Tyrwhitt in Smith's 'Diet, of Christ. Antiq.') Reginald Scot, in his 'Discoverie of Witchcraft,' 1665, p. 85, was terrified in his childhood by the devil with " a skin like a niger." But it is easy to comprehend how black and yellow were occasionally, if not tra- ditionally, assigned to the devil, for in our own day yellow denotes inconstancy, jealousy, &c., and in France the doors of traitors were daubed with yellow, while in some countries the law ordained that Jews should be clothed in yellow, because they had betrayed Christ. Perhaps all this was because Judas is allotted a yellow pigment by way of distinction ; and in Spain the vestments of the executioner are red or yellow, the latter indicating the treason of the guilty, the former its punish- ment. J. H.OLDBN MACMlCHAEL. COPE OF BRAMSHILL (10th S. iii. 87,174).— Cope of Hanwell, co. Oxford, as noted p. 174. See ' The English Baronetage,' London,