Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/279

 us. MI. OCT. 2, 1915.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

271

" under Elizabeth and James I., 1558- 1612, 8."

Under Elizabeth three persons were burnt for heresy at Norwich (Matthew Hamond of Hethersett, 20 May, 1578 ; John Lewis alias Abdoit, 14 or 17 Sept., 1583 ; and Francis Kett, 14 Jan., 1588/9); two in Smithfield (John Wielmacher alias Peeters, and Hen- drick Ter Voort, both 22 July, 1575) ; and one at Ipswich (Peter Cole, date not ascer- tained, 1587).

Under James I. Bartholomew Legate was burnt in Smithfield, 18 March, 1611/12, and Edmund Wightman at Lichfield, 11 April, 1612. JOHN B. WAINE WRIGHT.

"NARTHEX" (11 S. xii. 220). Catechu- mens in the primitive Church were anointed with the oil of catechumens several times before being baptized. This anointing took place in the narthex, which may well have derived its name from this circumstance.

Another explanation, less likely to my mind, might be found in the fact that the narthex was used for funeral rites, and that in early Christian burials myrrh and spices were employed.

JOHN B. WAINE WRIGHT.

MAJOR SEMPLE (11 S. xii. 220). The account of this notorious character in the ' Dictionary of National Biography ' is very inadequate, and a more complete descrip- tion will be found in ' The Newgate Calendar,' by Andrew Knapp and William Baldwin (1828), iv. 151-4, which traces his career to 3 Dec., 1814, when he was sentenced at the Middlesex Sessions to transportation for seven years. He had been shipped to Botany Bay before, and he may have died there. I have failed to find his obituary notice in The Gentleman's Magazine. There are many paragraphs about him in contem- porary newspapers, particularly in the years 1785-6, 1792, 1795, 1798, 1805, 1810, and 1814. In a tract, published by George Kearsley in 1786, entitled ' The " Northern Hero. Being a faithful account of the Life, Adventures, and Deceptions of James George Semple,' pp. 10-11, he is said to have married a lady of good Devonshire family named

G -t, who was a connexion of Elizabeth

Chudleigh, Countess of Bristol. Other par- ticulars will be found in the following : ' The Northern Hero, minutely. .. .delineated in

the Life of Major S le ' (P. McQueen

& J. Forbes, 1786) ; ' An Authentic Detail. . relative to the late Duchess of Kingston' (G. Kearsley, 1788), pp. 115, 141 ;' The Newgate Calendar,' by Wm. Jackson, vi. 368 ; ' Chronicles of Crime,' by Camden Pelham, (

i. 564 ; ' Celebrated Trials,' v. 351 ; ' The Life of Mrs. Gooch ' (1892) ; Henry Angelo's 'Reminiscences' (Kegan Paul, 1904), ii. 187-92 ; ' Mysteries of Police and Crime,' by Major A. Griffiths, i. 243-6.

HORACE BLEACKLEY.

" DAIE WORKES" AND "RODDS" (11 S. xii. 221). The information desired at this reference will be found in the late Dr. Frederic Seebohm's ' The English Village Community' (2nd ed., 1883). A. C. C.

WANSTEAD PARK (11 S. xii. 121, 164, 222, 246). In the dining-room of the house of my brother at Waltham Abbey there is a marble mantelpiece that came " from the house of Wanstead Park.

A. COIXINGWOOD LEE. Waltham Abbey.

" CONVERSATION" COOKE (US. xii. 221). ' Conversation,' a didactic poem by \\illiam Cooke, was published in 1796, second edition 1807. Of the author I find, " He took to his second wife a sister of the late Major Galway, who. died commander of Trichi- nopoly." W. B. H.

Bamff Charters, A.D. 1232-1703. Edited by Sir James Ramsay of Bamff, LL.D. (Oxford University Press, 15s. net.)

THESE charters show the ordinary legal transac- tions, and hence a good deal of the ordinary life,, of a long line of Scotch lairds and baronets who came of a prolific and enduring stock, but were not prominently engaged in any great crisis of Scotch history. No doubt the collection will be primarily interesting to the family, since, as Miss Jane Harrison puts it, aristocracies all the world over worship their ancestors ; but there is much in these documents relating to law, language, custom, and social life which will make an appeal to a wider circle.

The Ramsays of Bamff trace their descent, not from a warrior, but from an intellectual, one Neis or Nessus, who, in his capacity of physician to Alexander II. (1214-49), is said to have done his master the service of "cutting a hair-ball from off the Royal heart " a hair-ball in the stomach being apparently a malady still incident to cows, but not to the present more fortunate race of men. That the story was credited by Neis's descendants is evident from the quasi -heraldic symbol which in 1634 adorned a mere-stone, indicating where the Ramsay property marched with that of the Earl of Crawford. The stone showed on one side the Crawford arms, and on the other " ane picture of ane scheir with the manner of ane ball within the plaits and sobering of the sheiris," in obvious allusion to the affair of Alexander II. Neis the legendary version calls him Sir James owed his skill in surgery to his- miraculous eyesight, which could penetrate" untill