Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/411

 v. APRIL 28, 1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

339

Granthams are not known to be related to the Sussex people happening to bear the same surname. LINDUM COLONIA.

A very thrilling announcement concerning Mr. Justice Granthain's descent is made in the April number of The Windsor Magazine, in the course of an article by Mr. B. Fletcher Robinson (editor of Vanity Fair}, entitled
 * Chronicles in Cartoon ' (p.' 626) :

"He comes of an ancient family, and owns to an ancestor one St. Hugh Grantham whom the Jews crucified at Lincoln in the good old days when Richard the Lion Heart was King." It may be presumed that neither Sir William nor anybody else would think of claiming more than collateral descent from the child of eight or thereabout who is said to have been the victim of a ritual murder. It is a mere trifle that the alleged crime is supposed to have taken place, not when "Richard the Lion Heart was King," but in 1255, some fifty-five or fifty-six years after his death.

ST. SWITHIN.

MOZARABIC MASS IN SPAIN (10 th S. v. 250). MR. DODGSON may be interested by the following sentence in * The Sanctuary Kalendar,' 1906, edited by Percy Dearmer and F. C. Eeles (p. 40) : " In two places in Spain at least, and one in Portugal, if not more, the Mozarabic rite is used."

Has your correspondent consulted ' Litur- gies, Eastern and Western,' by F. E. Bright- man 1 FRED. G. ACKERLEY.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

Media' ral London. By Sir Walter Besant. Vol. I.

Historical and Social. (A. & C. Black. ) SIR WALTER BESANT'S account of London, to the appearance of successive volumes of which we have drawn attention, is his magnum opus. Its com- pilation was to him a labour of love, and its com- pletion, had he been spared to see it, would have been a delight. Without being absolutely history, the account of London, of which the crowning portion appears, has all its accuracy, with a measure of personal vivacity and picturesqueness which is not its constant concomitant. The volume is in two parts, the first of which deals with mediaeval sovereigns from Henry II. to Richard III., while the second is occupied with social and general con- siderations, the Port and trade, the streets, buildings, furniture, wealth, manners and customs, literature, sport, crime, and punishment. A specially attractive feature consists of the illustrations, which are ad- mirably chosen. These are mostly taken from original sources, and are of remarkable value. See especially the view of ' The Ladies' Bower' (p. 249), the views of tournaments, &c., from Froissart, and the Chaucerian illustrations from the Ellesmere MS. The work constitutes, indeed, a treasure- house.

Monumental Brasses in the Bedfordshire Churches* By Grace Isherwood. With Illustrations drawn by Kitty Isherwood from Rubbings by the- Authoress. (Elliot Stock.)

WE gladly welcome Miss Isherwood's useful book on the monumental brasses of Bedfordshire. .It is- highly condensed, as was needful for a book of reference which the antiquary will naturally desire to carry with him in his wanderings ; but it is to be wished that the author had, where possible, described all the shields of arms which survive. In the Middle Ages heraldry was fluent, not tied up by those hard-and-fast rules which some of our current literature so needlessly exaggerates. From time to time Miss Isherwood gives notes short, but to the point on the families whose brasses are described. The earliest military brass in Bedfordshire occurs in Cople Church. It is to a Walter Rolond. There- is no date given. The inscription is in French, and the figure in complete plate armour. In the same church there occurs a brass to Thomas Gray and Benet his wife, inscribed with fourteen lines of verse, beginning :

What can myght, powr or auncyet bloode avayll,. Or els riches, that men cownte felicite?

We have heard verses almost identical with these quoted as existing elsewhere we believe in the^ North Riding. On a brass of the puddle sixteenth century to one of the Bulkeleys in Cople Church* are the words " Thynke and Thank God." Was this the family motto? or must we regard it as personal ?

Under Sutton the author says that the present Sir John Burgoyne holds the manors of Sutton and Polton by charter from John of Gaunt, and proceed* to supply an English version, printing it as if it were prose, although it was clearly meant for verse* as we give it :

I, John of Gaunt,

Do give and grant

To Roger Burgoyn,

And the heirs of his line,

The manors of Sutton and Polton,

Until the earth be rotten.

We need not say that it is either a jest or an inept forgery. Several jingles of a like character have been printed from time to time, but we do nob remember to have encountered the present one else- where.

Matthew de Asseheton, rector of Shillington and canon of York, was buried in 1400 in the church of his rectory, and a fine brass exists to his memory.. His rebus, we are told, was an ass and a tun.

The Works of William Shakespeare. Vols. IV. and V. (Stratford on-Avon, Shakespeare Head Press.)- Two further volumes of the noble edition of the poet which is the first to bear the imprint of his birthplace have appeared, marking the accomplish- ment of half the task. Vol. iv. finishes, with 'Twelfth Night' and 'The Winter's Tale,' the comedies, and has the first two historical plays,. 4 King John' and 'King Richard II.' As a frontis- piece it reproduces in admirable style the portrait of the dramatist in the Memorial Gallery, Strat- ford-on-Avon. The fifth volume meantime com- prises the two parts of 'King Henry IV.,' 'King Henry V.,' and the first part of ' King Henry VI.,* and has for frontispiece a reproduction of the Ely portrait. In all literary and bibliographical respects-