Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 11.djvu/457

 ii s. XL JUNE 12, i9i5.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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as to make it feasible for the MS. to be equally well assigned to the latter as to the former century ? I merely put this forward as a suggestion. I have, unfortunately, no opportunity of obtaining confirmatory evidence on the point. If, however, the supposition is sound, one would perhaps not be far wrong in assuming that the record of the Marshals and their descendants, of which the passage I have quoted forms a part, was written between 1234 and 1347 ; and I venture to submit that, being so written, or even as late as the fifteenth century, it may be accepted both as genuine and trustworthy. The manuscript was pre- sented by Archbishop Laud, with others, to the Bodleian Library in 1636.

FRANCIS H. RELTON. 8, Lansdowne Road, East Croydon.

(To be continued.)

THE SITE OF THE GLOBE.

I WAS present, as one of the subscribers, when the little bronze tablet, placed to commemorate the approximate site of the Globe, on the north wall of Messrs. Barclay's Brewery, was unveiled in October, 1909. As some doubt hai been thrown on the correctness of the historical localization of the building, based on an interpretation of an interesting document concerning it which had appeared in Thz Tim-'S of the 2nd of that month, I was very anxious to be allowed to tell what I knew about the matter. But so many people wanted to speak, no time could be given to me. I told Dr. Martin, but as he did not include the chief points in his little book on ' The Site of the Globe,' I think that I ought to record it, while any of those who can confirm it remain alive.

The alterations made in Barclay's Brewery, between 1880 and 1890, were superintended by my husband, Mr. Henry Stopes, architect and engineer. He was then also F.Hist.Soc., F.G.S., a life member of the Anthropo- logical Institute, and a passionate hunter after palaeolithic implements in the Upper and Lower Terrace gravels of the Thames Valley. He was accustomed to estimate carefully even the most apparently trifling signs of geological depositions, and was peculiarly fitted to make a thorough in- vestigation of the subsoil of the Bankside. I begged him to make sure of carefully reading the title-deeds, and to examine everything he found in the region of foundations. He did so. His opinion was, from the title-deeds, that as the Barclay

property included Globe Alley, which led to- the old theatre both ways, r nd as it included Globe Court, it also included the site of the- old Globe. He afterwards told me that he had come upon foundations (at the received site) which seemed of the suitable shape and mass for such a purpose (the exigences of the other buildings forbade a more thorough search), and he spoke of a tree as a pointer to, rather than as the point of, the ancient building. I have always regretted that I did not ask leave to go and see the works then..

I went on making notes, and, among others, carefully read in the original the Ost'er Heming case, to which I happened to have the reference, though it has never been printed (Coram Rege Roll, Hilary Term, 13 James I., m. 692). But as I understood that Dr. Martin was doing further work on the subject, and as I quite agreed with his conclusions, I naturally published nothing. As, however, he did not answer the assump- tions made in The Times, May, 1914, I think I may here add the few additional points I have, for the use of students interested.

I have a transfer of the Rose tenement,, before it was turned into a theatre, at the point where it has always been located, in Rose Alley, north-west of Maiden Lane, where the extent of Bankside broadens out, and the enclosing streets bend further north and south. The Coram Rege case recites that Nicholas Brend, on 21 Feb, 41 E!iz. granted to Burbage and others all that parcel in four lots occupied by Thomas Burt, Isbrand Morris, and Lactantius Roper, 220 feet east to west, " adjungentem vise sive venellae ibidem ex uno latere et abuttantem super peciam terrse vocatam The Parke super boream " ; and another lot held by Roberts and Ditcher, " et adjungentem super alio latere vise sive venellse pre- dictse. . . .et abuttantem. . . .super venellam ibidem vocatam Maiden Lane versus austrum." The rough plan drawn for The Times in 1909 inverts the two lots from north to south, and thereby transports them to the north of Maiden Lane, carrying " the Park " with them as a boundary still to the north of all (while we knew that a row of houses faced the river to the north). It becomes a case, then, first for a surveyor's estimate. It may be remembered that draining and embankment generally narrow and deepen the channel of a river, and increase the acreage of the banks. So we may take it for granted that the area of the Bank in Shakespeare's time was smaller, rather than larger, than it is to-day. The application of a surveyor's rod would soon.