Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/486

 478

NOTES AND QUERIES.

s. i. JCKE 11, 1910.

presented the four beautiful pewter alms- dishes bearing his arms to the church of St. Katharine Cree. The plate of this church (all pre -Restoration) was carefully secreted during the Commonwealth, and is said to be unrivalled in the City. The Com- munion service is presumably that used by Archbishop Laud at the consecration of the church when rebuilt in 1630, a cere- mony which partly led to his execution on Tower Hill, only a short distance away.

Hans Holbein died of the plague in 1543 whilst employed at the Duke of Norfolk's house (Duke's Place), and was no doubt buried hurriedly in Cree Church, but the spot cannot be ascertained. This church, and what is left of the beautiful churchyard, now sealed up behind Leadenhall Street, is all that is left of the ancient priory. Of the original church erected by Richard de Gravesend, Bishop of London from 1280 to 1303, little, if anything, is visible : ancient masonry may be traced outside just above the ground level along the south and west fronts. The lower portion of the tower dates somewhere about 1504. The churchyard is part of the original priory founded by Queen Matilda, the half-Saxon wife of Henry I., in 1108.

The name St. James's Place is probably derived from St. James's Church, erected there in 1622, and pulled down in 1874 :

This sacred structure which this Senate fames Our King [James I.] hath stil'd the Temple of

St. James.

St. James's Church was notorious for irre- gular marriages. F. A. LINDSAY-SMITH.

I do not quite understand why MB. Ho WARD -FLANDERS considers St. James's Place a "misleading title" for the open square. It has been applied now a good many years, and clearly it was justified by the proximity of the church of St. James, consecrated 2 Jan., 1622/3. The reason for the change was similar to that which led to Petticoat Lane becoming Middlesex Street. In seeking to associate a Duke of St. Albans with it MR. BRESLAR was, I think, confusing it with St. James's Square.

ALECK ARBAHAMS.

[MR. HOWARD-FLANDERS'S signature was misspelt ante, p. 437.]

KEMPESFELD, HAMPSTEAD (11 S. i. 409). It is evident that kempes is the genitive of the Middle English kempe, which is the A.-S. cempa, a fighter, a warrior, found in the eighth century in the Erfurt Glossary. Fully explained in ' N.E.D.,' s.v. ' Kemp.' ' WALTER W. SKEAT.

0tt

The Manor. Houses of England. By P. H. Ditch- field. Illustrated by Sydney K. Jones. (B T Batsford.)

THIS work is uniform in size with Mr. Ditchfield's volume on ' The Charm of the English Village/ and is likely to secure the same success. The author writes well and fluently, and is ably seconded by the artist. It is impossible in a single volume of some 200 pages to include a selection which will satisfy everybody we miss r for instance, some of our favourite examples ; but Mr. Ditchfield has been able to illustrate his subject by buildings for the most part off the well-beaten road, and no lover of old England will read his pages without a freshened interest.

The historic side of the manor is scantily treated, and is, indeed, on record elsewhere j but chapters will be found which illustrate in an interesting way ' Materials of Construction,' ' Exterior Details,' ' Interior Details,' ' Metal Work,' and ' Gardens and Surroundings.' The last theme is so much overwritten nowadays that we should not have objected to its omission here in order to make a little more room for archi- tecture, a subject as yet but little understood by the average man. Mr. Ditchfield has succeeded, we think, in the task of mingling " utile dulci," and we hope his sketch will have a wide circulation. The illustrations are decidedly attractive, and sufficiently typical to recall more instances than one of the details pictured.

The Fortnightly opens with a memorial sonnet entitled ' He Died in Harness.' Mr. J. L. Garvin in his review of ' Imperial and Foreign Affairs,' Mr. Walter Sichel in ' The Privileges of Kingship,' and Mr. Sydney Brooks in ' The King and the Crisis r all deal with the reflections suggested by the great disaster which plunged the nation into- mourning. The series of revelations ' Why Russia went to War with Japan ' is continued. There are two able articles on ' Tourgueneff,' by Mr. Francis Gribble, and Mr. R. H. P. Curie respec- tively. Mr. W. L. Courtney's introduction to Marcus Aurelius, ' A Philosophic Emperor,' is an excellent summary of the position and merits of the ' Meditations ' and the man who wrote them. Mrs. Alec Tweedie gossips agreeably about ' William Quiller Orchardson,' though some of her matter is trivial. Her account of the real tennis courts in England is very inadequate. The one at Hampton Court might, at least, have been mentioned ; and all lovers of the game are aware of several private institutions of the kind. Dr, Johnston's ' Walt Whitman : the Poet of Nature ' is too slight to please, us. Mr. Lewis Melville has an interesting account of ' Sterne's Eliza,' in which he has used some unpublished letters pre- served at Hoddington House. In the letter given on p. 1140 it seems clear that, after the mention of "Mrs. Draper," "Mr. Draper" (not " Mrs."> should be printed. In ' The Last Meeting with Bjernson ' Mr. Peter Lansen gives a touching account of the great writer's departure from his native land for Paris, his failing powers, and the efforts of his friends at the railway station to make everything bright for him. It is an admir- able tribute alike to Bjornson and to friendship. Mr. Sampson Morgan in 'Fruit for Food and Food tfor Fruit' supplies some useful hints oa