Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/273

 10- S. VII. MARCH 23, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

221

LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH 23, 1907.

CONTENTS. No. 169.

iNOTES: Order of the Tusin, 221 Longfellow, 222 Granger annotated by Caultield, 223 Pacolet Berwick Law, 225 Curtain Lectures " Author" used for " Editor " "Piscon-led,"226 "Attorney" The Flag "Presi- dent": "Precedent" "Bulk" and Baskish "Bulka," 227.

(QUERIES : "Then with Rodney we will go, my boys": ' The Vicar of Bray 'Lady Clara Sparrow The Preston Jubilee, 227 Authors of Quotations Wanted Kirby Hall, Northants Arms Wanted Roger Landon.iMus. Doc. Porlock Church "Twopence for manners," 228 " Woodhens "Dante on Paolo and Francesca Eleanor, Daughter of Edward I. Archbishop's Imprimatur, 229 Martindale, Westmorland Seringapatam Mourning Rites in Persia, 230.

REPLIES : " Bawms March," 230 " Vittle " = Victual. .231 Poonah Painting " Pomperkin "Churchwardens' Accounts Westminster Changes, 190C Authors of Quota- tions Wanted, 232 Camoens, Sonnet cciii. : "Frescas belvederes " Holden Family Worple Way John Law of Lauriston Pitch-caps put on Human Heads and set on Fire, 233 Great Hollow Elm at Hampstead Sir H. Campbell - Bannerman on Britain's Supremacy of the Sea, 234 "The Mahalla" Sir George Howard, Field- Marshal ' Cranford ' Duke of Kent's Children The People's Charter : Political Song Cathay, 235 Napoleon's Carriage Chesterfield and Wotton Portraits ' New York Times ' : ' Chnistian Union 'Musical Genius : is it Hereditary ? Musical Composers as Pianists Hoek van Holland, 236 Legends on English Gold and Silver Coins "Esprit de 1'escalier" " Forwhy," 237 The Ghiltern Hundreds ' The Kingdom's Intelligencer ' Lord Halifax, 238.

NOTES ON BOOKS: 'The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles' 'The Poetical Works of John Keats.'

Booksellers' Catalogues.

JN-otices to Correspondents.

ORDER OF THE TUSIN. Haydn's ' Diet, of Dates,' under ' Knights,' we are told that the members of the Order of the Tusin were Hungarian Knights, and that the order was founded .about 1562. This statement, is no doubt, copied from Archer's ' Orders of Chivalry,' and due to some misunderstanding. Hierony- mus Megiser in his ' Tractat von dem drey- fachen Ritterstand ' (Frankfurt, 1593) men- tions a military order of Hungarian knights, which, he heard, was founded to fight the Turks after the fall of the Hungarian capital. The members of the order wore a red habit with a green cross on white ground on their breast (the Hungarian national colours) ; but the order, if it ever existed, was not that of the Tusin ; and as Buda was occupied by r the Turks in 1541, the order could not have been over 200 years old in Megiser's time, as stated by him.

The date 1562 is also wrong, but is, with curious persistency, repeated in all books on the subject whenever a date is given. It is generally stated that Albert II. founded

the order in that year, which is manifestly wrong, as the emperor died in 1439. Some of the authors, however, have noticed the glaring anachronism, and get over it, like F. C. Woodhouse, e.g., by making the founder Albert III., who is unknown to history, or Maximilian II., who appeared too late on the scene.

The ' Diccionario Universal,' by Fran- cisco de Paula Mellado (Madrid, 1848), describes the order as follows :

" Tuxin. Orden de caballeria creado en Alemania en 1562 <> antes, puesto one consta que en este aiio el emperador Alberto II. la did a Diego de Valera."

But Diego was born about 1420, and the emperor died in 1439, as already stated ; and all that I can find about the former is that he was at Prague in 1437, when Albert II., King of the Romans, made several barons in his presence. This is his own statement in the ' Tratado de los Rieptos ' (on the penultimate page), and no mention whatever is made of any order having been conferred on himself. It is another author, Franciscus Mennenius, who is to be held responsible for disseminating the error. He in his turn quotes Hierony- mus Romanus as his authority in the follow- ing passage :

"Refert et Hieronymus Romanus ex historia hispanica Regis Joannis, tempore Sigismundi et Alberti Impp. floruisse in Germania tres insi<nies ordines equestres, nee non Moysem [sic!] Didacum de Valera Hispanum, probate fortitudinis equitem ab eo Alberto, tribus militise insignibus fuisse con- decoratum ; Draconico nempe, tamquam a Rege Hungarian ; Tusinio ut a rege Bohemiae, et collar! Disciplinarum aquila Candida (quae et Polonorum Regum in Campo rubeo tessera est) exornato, ut a Duce Austria. 'Deliciae Equestrium Ordinum ' Antwerp, 1613, p. 156.

Either Hieronymus Romanus or his authority was probably mistaken about the individual upon whom the three decorations were conferred by Albert II., because another Spanish hidalgo and traveller, Pero Tafur, records in his ' Andances e Viajes ' that he was presented, in 1438, to Albert II. at Breslau, on which occasion the emperor conferred on him the identical three orders of chivalry, viz., the Hungarian Order of the Dragon, the Austrian Order of the Eagle, and " el Tusenique, que quiere dezir tovaja que es de Bohemia," that is, the Bohemian Order of the Towel, which was no doubt the Tusin.

Tafur's modern editor, M. Jimenez de la Espada, explains in a note that the Tusen- ique was the " orden de la Toalla 6 Banda," and that its device was " una cruz verde de la misma forma que la Montesa en campo