Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/319

 us. XIL OCT. is, mo.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

311

Bassf s " sad story" MR. MERCER can probably give dates, if he will be kind enough to do so. In particular, when was the excommunication published ? It was appa- rently between the 3rd and the 18th of August, 1849.

Is the sermon in a hospital (pp. 87 sqq. of ' The Disciples,' 10th ed.), which has been republished in pamphlet form, founded on an actual discourse by Ugo Bassi, or is it entirely the composition of the poetess ? She modi- fied her views after 1890, but would not, I think, have modified this sermon.

JOHN B. WATNE WRIGHT.

ST. ANDREW: NATIONAL COLOURS (11 S. xii. 49, 110, 205, 289). I am much obliged to A. T. for calling attention to the very careless mistake I made (ante, pp. 206-7) in assigning the tinctures, or colours, of the ' Cross" of St. Patrick. It is obvious that these should be transposed, or else the com- plicated design known as the " Union Jack " could not be drawn as it now is.

J. S. UDAL, F.S.A.

VERSES BY JAMES SMITH (US. xii. 257). The lines on ' Time and Love ' will be found in " The Memoirs, Letters, and Comic Miscellanies of the late James Smith, Esq., edited by his brother, Horace Smith, Esq.," London, Henry Colburn, 1840, vol. i. p. 324.

S. R. C.

BISHOP ELPHINSTONE'S BADGE (11 S. xii. 260). The badge referred to by MR. D. L. GALBREATH is apparently a part of the arms of the University of Aberdeen, which the bishop founded. Dr. Woodward, in his ' Ecclesiastical Heraldry,' 1894 (p. 447), re the University of Aberdeen, says :

"The old common seal of the University bears a vase or pot in which are arranged three garden lilies, the emblem of the Blessed Virgin ; on the front of the vase are three fishes arranged in a fret. In chief a hand reaches downwards in pale and holds an open book."

The three fishes in fret is, of course, a very old ecclesiastical emblem.

J. DE BERNIERE SMITH. 4, Gloucester Gate, Regent's Park, N.W.

The badge mentioned by MR. GALBREATH is the coat of arms of King's College, Aber- deen (founded by Bishop Elphinstone in 1495), namely, Azure, upon a vase three salmon interlaced proper ; issuing from the vase three lilies, orie closed, one partly open, one fully open (illustrating the de- velopment of the student's mind) ; in chief,

a hand issuing from clouds, holding an open book proper. The portrait referred to is probably that of the bishop which hangs in the hall of King's College. M.D.ABERD.

The Church Bells of Sussex, tvith the Inscriptions

of all the Bells in the County in 1864, and a

Jubilee Article thereon written in 1914. By

Amherst D. Tyssen. (Lewes, Farncombe.)

THIS is a reprint .from vols. Ivii. and xvi. of the

Sussex Archaeological Society's Publications, and

the author is to be doubly congratulated first on

having by means of his article of 1864 helped in

starting antiquaries in all parts of England upon a

line of interesting research till then more or less

neglected, and secondly upon having lived to

write a jubilee summary of the additional work

done since that beginning and of the present

position of the study.

As is well known, the maker's name and the date of post-Reformation bells are not often to seek ; they appear inscribed upon the bell, with theaddition.it may be, of a vicar's or of the church- wardens' names, and many a good bell is ill-fated enough to bear, besides, lines of ridiculous doggerel of doubtful taste. There is, however, plenty of picturesque detail to be gathered concerning the earlier post-Reformation bell-founders, those who,, when the means of transport were inconvenient, journeyed or sent their men from place to place to make or to recast the bells of the country- side. They would have their main works at Reading, or Southampton, or Canterbury, at Tarring or at Lewes ; but when work was to be done for a remote church the workman journeyed to the spot and there set up his base and furnace,. and dug the pit for the mould. Some of the bell- founders were, indeed, only itinerant craftsmen, of whom, for example, we may mention John Waylett, who was active in the early part of the eighteenth century, and forty of whose bells yet hang in Sussex towers. Other names of somewhat earlier date, to which something of definite history can be attached, are William Hull (who made the Catsfield tenor, and worked at South Mailing) and John Wood (who recast a bell at Berwick, near Lewes, for which we have the agree- ment made between him and the churchwardens).. But more interesting than these are the pre- Reformation bells, whose makers it is not always easy to determine, and which bear invocations of saints (the great saint in campanology is St. Catherine), Aves, and pious mottoes in Leonine hexameters as their inscriptions. As a result of the investigations of the last fifty years it seems fairly clear that c. 1200 may be taken as the earliest date to which any bells hi England go back, though very few are earlier than 1250. The oldest inscribed bell in Sussex is thought by the authori- ties on this point to be that at West Thorm-y, which bears a cross and the word " Ihesvs." It belongs to the group of bells Mith the "Gothic majuscule " or " Lombardic capital " letters which are found till c. 1400, when they give way to minuscule or black-letter alphabets.

The English method of inscribing bells is usually that of stamping the letters or the device into the clay cope into which the bell is cast. It is