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NOTES AND QUERIES. [11 s. x. OCT. si. wit

The Graphic also published an excellent portrait in the issue of 7 Oct., 1871, conse- quent on his election as President of the Society of Painters in Water Colours.

There is a characteristic portrait of himself by himself, with the crossed initials ,TG beside it, in a picture published in The Illustrated London News (?date), bearing the following superscription in facsimile :

" The Hanging Committee of the Water-Colour Society, April llth, 12th, 13th, and 14th, 1870. Drawn by John Gilbert, and presented by him to the Water-Colour Society, July, 1877."

But my favourite engraved portrait of Sir John is the one drawn by Linley Sam- bourne, and issued by Punch in the famous series of " Fancy Portraits." Beneath it appears the following apt " New Version " of the last six lines of Shakespeare's Sixty- Eighth Sonnet : In him those wholly antique Hours are seen,

To Art an Ornament, himself, and true, Leaving to crazy Limners pale sage Green To clothe limp lanky Forms of sickly Hue.

But him as for a Map doth Nature store, To show false Art true Chivalry of yore.

JOHN T. PAGE. Long Itchington, Warwickshire.

" FFRANCIS " (11 S. x. 228, 276). As the small ff initial seems to meet with some countenance, I would quote the following from ' Whitaker's Peerage ' for 1907 :

" Note on names commencing with FF. It has been and still is customary with some amongst the few holders of these names to write them wholly in small letters, the initial included, thus violating the rule of the English language that every proper name shall commence with a capital. We must continue to protest against this practice as one which no plea of long usage can possibly justify .... It is really a degrading of the families, who by thus toriting themselves down distort their names into monstrosities which by no law of language can be forced into names at all .... These vagaries should be left to the private gratification of their upholders."

W. B. H.

GKOOM OF THE STOLE (US. viii. 466, 515 ; ix. 32, 95, 157 ; x. 295). There appears to be no doubt that in the eighteenth century this officer put on the king's shirt, or was svipposed to do so, and I suppose we shall see in the ' N.E.D.' whether there be any evidence for a shirt having previously been called a " stole " in English. The Latin stola, in classical use, seems to have de- noted an upper garment or robe. In the " Ambrosian " hymn " Ad coanam Agni " (' H. A. and M./128) it is used of the bap- tismal robe : " Et stolis albis candidi." In a hymn by Adam of St. Victor (' H. A. and

M.,' 620) it is used of a royal robe : " Stola regni laureatus.'' The author of the ' In- goldsby Legends ' probably had the classical use in mind when he wrote something about "nice little boys in nice white stoles ' r (I quote from memory only), meaning choristers in surplices. But I can hardly imagine even a royal shirt being called a " stole."

And I still think it highly probable that the Groom of the Stole originally attended to the Stole- (or Stool-) Chamber, for which there is abundant evidence in Sir William, Hope's great book on Windsor Castle.

J. T. F.

Winterton, Lines.

The Story of Bethlehem Hospital from its Founda- tion in 1247. By Edward Geoffrey O'Donoghue, Chaplain to the Hospital. (Fisher Unwin, 15*. net.

BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL, known more generally by that name of Bedlam round which grim associations have so thickly gathered, is a thirteenth-century foundation originally an alien priory belonging to- the order of St. Mary of Bethlehem. The mother- house was at Bethlehem itself, its purpose being to care for the pilgrims who resorted to Constantine's famous basilica of the Nativity there. The history of the order is obscure, and what has been made out is but little known, so that the first pages of Mr. O'Donoghue's book evidently the result of a careful working over of the data available are of more than ordinary value. In the earlier half of the thirteenth century the affairs of Bethlehem owing to the rapacity and insubordination of a prominent ecclesiastic fell into great disorder, and the Pope in 1245. by a special encyclical, enjoined upon the faithful to succour the brethren of Bethlehem, numbers of whom were then them- selves wanderers up and down Christian countries,, collecting alms for Bethlehem, and having daughter- houses in Italy to which to resort.

Two years later Simon FitzMary, a wealthy London citizen, "gave and granted to God and the Church of St. Mary of Bethlehem all that land [which he possessed] in the parish of St. Botolph without Bishopsgate, London," and here where Liverpool Street and the stations of the Great Eastern, North London, and Metropolitan Rail- ways now stand stood the first Bethlehem Hospital. For more than a century its history is- scanty, and not specially creditable. It bore some part in civic life its chapel serving as chapel for the confraternities of the Drapers and Skinners ; it was seized as an alien priory by Edward III. ; its master and proctor were arrested for the sale of forged indulgences. Not till 1377 is it certain that it was used as an asylum for the insane ; about that time the patients of the "Stonehouse" at Charing Cross were transferred to it.

During the fifteenth century its character as a religious house faded away. John Arundell, one of the royal physicians, was master in 1457 ; and in the next century Anne Boleyn's brother was-