Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 11.djvu/403

 11 S. XI. MAY 22, 1915.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

393

LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY 22, 1915.

CONTENTS. No. 282.


 * 4 College Hall-book of 1401-2. 393 London

Homes of Impey and Hastings, 394 Notes on Words for the 'N.E.D.,' 395 Parish Registers, 397 " Scummer " Women serving as Men on Board Ship, 398 First Earl of Mansfield and Lord Foley, 399.

QUERIES : Campbell and Polignac " Woolpack " at Banstead Mungo Campbell Heraldic Query St. Chad, 399 True Blue Hampden Nancy Dawson Henry Lintot Biographical Information Wanted " Gazebo " Copyright Authorship of Sermons, 400 Rear- Admiral Donald Campbell Authors Wanted Willett Family in America, 401 Mr. Jay, American Minister Sophia Horrebow Victor Vispr^ "Dean of Ripon's famous similitude " Colonia : Cologne S. S. Jones D. James, Painter Munday Surname, 402.

HEPLIES : Dialect Words of the Fifties. 403-Cromwell's Ironsides, 404 Necessary Nicknames "The Lady of the Lamp," 405 Julius Caesar and Old Ford T. Skottowe : South Carolina before 1776. 406 Easter Hare Oxford- shire Landed Gentry, 407 Francesca Maria, Cardinal de Medici Aleppo Rosa Bonhenr's ' Duel 'Tubular Bells, 408" Andrew Halliday " Old Plays Price Family The Zanzigs School Folk- Lore, 409 Early Railway Travelling Old Etonians Marybone Lane and Swallow Street Garbrand, 410.

"NOTES ON BOOKS : -Calendar of State Papers at Venice 'Palaeography and the Practical Study of Court Hand' Ben Jonson's 'Tale of a Tub.'

Illuminated MSS. of the Fifteenth and Earlier Centuries.

Notices to Correspondents.

A COLLEGE HALL-BOOK OF 1401-2.

WHAT I like best about the Winchester College Hall -book which is marked on its first page " H. iiij" 3 " (the regnal year that began on 30 Sept., 1401) is that some- body, whose Latin was not what the dic- tionaries call " quite classical," wrote upon the inside of the cover while the book was new :

Non teneas aurum totum quod splendet ut aururn Nee pulcrum pomuni quodlibet esse bonum.

On a spare bit of the leaf devoted to the

sixth week of the second quarter of the year,

this same scribe or another, while practising

the letter " S," became minded to write :

Somnia compellens ad meliora boves.

Should this article have a drowsy effect upon readers, I wish them also pleasant dreams.

A considerable number of our old hall- books have been preserved, but the series is far from being complete. The collection begins with portions of books which pro- bably belong to the years 1395-6 and 1396-7.

Then comes the book which has already been mentioned, of 3 H. IV. : it is perfect, save for loss of part of its cover. The books which follow next are for 1406-7, 1411-2, 1412-3, 1414-5, 1415-6, 1416-7, 1423-4, and 1424-5. But some of these are imperfect, and so also are some of the later books, about forty -six in all, which range from 1430-1 to 1519-20. One of them includes two years, 1503-4 and 1504-5, within its cover ; but, as a rule, each book is limited to one year, i.e., to one bursarial year, which usually began at or near Michaelmas.

The object of these books, which should contain for every \veek of the year a separate list of the whole community, drawn up under the superintendence of the Steward of Hall (a weekly office that the Fellows, other than the Subwarden, filled turn and turn about), was to have a record for calculating the sums to be entered in the Bursars' Account Rolls as the weekly allowances for commons. The commons or daily meals of all who were on the foundation had to be provided out of the College revenues, and there were fixed allow- ances for the cost : e.g., 2s. a week was usually allowed for the Warden, Is. for a Fellow, and 8d. for a Scholar. If any one was absent from meals for half a week, " di," the short for " dimidia septimana," was put against his name in the hall-book list, and then that week's allowance for him was halved in the Accounts. " All, half, or none," seems to have been the working rule : I cannot say precisely how it was applied to cases of absence for only one day or for as many as six. At the end of the year, if the actual cost had come to less than the sum total of the allowances, the differ- ence, being a gain to the College, appeared in the Account Boll as a receipt, " Excrescentia communarum." In 1403-4 this heading added to the income the fictitious sum of 33Z. 5s. 2frf.

A hall -book resembles in shape those long, narrow books which washerwomen still find convenient, a leaf being about twelve inches long and four and a half wide. By arranging the names in two columns, the scribe could generally get the particulars of one week into one leaf written on both sides, and a good specimen of a hall-book will be found to consist of about fifty -two leaves of admirable paper, each headed with a note of the week and of the Steward in course, and all stitched together into a parchment cover marked outside with some such title as " Nomina commensalium anno regni regis," &c., giving the regnal year : whether it is the year in which the book was begun or that in which