Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/502

 416 NOTES AND QUERIES. [io-s. iv. NOV. is, wos. direction. As State aid implies the dis- semination, as well as the conservation, of knowledge, I imagine that the provision of low-priced catalogues of MSS. should properly engage official attention, and that every public library in the kingdom should be sup- plied with copies. The Indexes, at any rate, to the Catalogues of MSS. and to the Calendars of State Papers should be obtain- able for a shilling or two apiece, or almost as easily as the half-yearly indexes to ' N. <fe Q.' It is surely remarkably short - sighted, when the type is set up, to print so few copies that hardly any one can get at them. One can scarcely speak with patience of the futility of printing Calendars nowadays with- out a lexicographical index. I have had myself to go to the expense of ten or twelve pounds in making a rough index for my own use to the ' Calendar of Chancery Proceedings, A.D. 1558-79/ printed by the Record Office in 1896 ; and similar unindexed calendars are still being issued. GEORGE F. T. SHERWOOD. 50, Beecroft Road, Brookley, S.E. SIR FRANCIS DRAKE AND CHIGWELL Row (19th S. iv. 230, 332).—According to Charles Kingsley (' Westward Ho!' chap, xxx.), Drake was one of those who were playing bowls on " the little terrace bowling-green behind the 'Pelican'Inn, on the afternoon of the nine- teenth of July," 1588. The reason given for continuing the game was that in Drake's opinion it would not be wise to be in a hurry to put to sea. "The following game is the game, and not the meeting one." ROBERT PIERPOINT. JOHN ALEYN, LAW REPORTER (10th S. iii. 344). — I have a copy of this gentleman's Reports (1681) amongst my books elsewhere, and I hope that MR. GORDON GOODWIN will pardon me for asking him to be kind enough to tell me in what consists their worthless- ness as a law report, which, he states, has been so branded by those competent'' autho- rities Marvin and Wallace." Would he mine telling me who these authorities are — for owing to my long absence from and dis connexion with anything legal in England, I am, I am sorry to say, ignorant of their very names — and where this sweeping criticism is to be found 1 MR. GOODWIN suggests that this "bad ness " may have arisen from the long interva that had occurred between the author's death in 1663 and the publication of his reports in 1681. Not unlikely, perhaps : bu inasmuch as these critics themselves state that "of the reporter himself nothing i known," whilst MR. GOODWIN has given quite a good account of John Aleyn, one is ust a little sceptical as to the value of their criticism. Can MR. GOODWIN tell me whether it is he value of the reports in their exposition >f the legal points involved that is impugned, r whether the compiler is faulty in the acts recorded in the cases which he reports! Vith regard to this latter, I am much nterested in one of the cases recorded in his "slender black-letter folio," more par- ticularly as to the correctness or otherwise of the spelling of the names of the parties ,o one of the suits there mentioned. W_hen MR. GOODWIN sees my signature he will know to which case I am referring. Are existence? and if so, are they capable of access ? J. S. UDAL, F.S.A. Antigua, W.I. WORFIELD CHURCHWARDENS' ACCOUNT? (10th S. iv. 327).—The blood procured by the churchwardens was probably to be used as paint for outside wooawork. Blood was fre- quently employed in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, and elsewhere for this purpose, especially on farm buildings, in comparatively modern days. So late as 1861 a correspondent of The Gentleman's Magazine tells of seeing » composition of bullock's blood and rud (red chalk) smeared on the exterior of one of the doors of York Minster (see ' Gent. Mag. Lib.: Topog.,' vol. xiv. p. 369). This blood may. however, have been procured for the purpose of mixing with mortar. Several examples of this custom have been referred to in previous numbers of'N.&Q.' Barker and Flecher were, it seems, chosen as brethren of the Guild of All Hallows st this time (1533). It would, we may be cer- tain, have a light burning in the church for the welfare of the members, and most pro- bably an altar there also. EDWARD PEACOCK. LOOPING THE LOOP : FLYING OR CENTRI- FUGAL RAILWAY : WHIRL OF DEATH (10" S. iv. 65, 176, 333).—I think J. C. P. must be in error in saying the Centrifugal Rail»»T was in the Botanic Gardens, Liverpool, about 1857. These gardens were transferred to the Corporation of Liverpool in 1841, and it ii not at all likely that they would eng»P Blondin to give an exhibition. IOOMO. Picton's ' Memorials,' vol. ii. p. 427, says th»t Blondin and many other celebrities P**' formed at the Zoological Gardens, Weri Derby Road ; and I should say that mo»t
 * he original MSS. or papers upon which
 * he learned compiler founded his reports in