Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/371

 us. xii. NOV. 6, 1915.1 NOTES AND QUERIES.

363

when he matriculated at the university there he was described as a poor Englishman ; and in the " first diary " he is said to have been of the diocese of St. Asaph's.

An Irishman born in Wales might well be described (by any one not of Welsh ex- traction) either as an Englishman or as an Irishman.

On the evidence, then, it is not unreasonable to identify the Dr. Allen for whom search is being made with this Roger Allen, priest, student of medicine, and undergraduate of Douai University (though no record is extant of his having taken the degree of M.D. either at Douai or elsewhere, and it is quite certain that he was not a Jesuit). If this identification be correct, Cardinal Moran will have been wrong in assuming this Dr. Allen to be a layman, and right in asserting him to have been a Doctor of Medicine, and all the other historians of this mere episode in history will have been right in saying that he was a priest, and wrong in calling him a Jesuit. As nearly all of these latter call Dr. Sander a Jesuit, which he was not, though he desired to be, there is no great improbability in their being n istaken in the case of Dr. Allen. They probably confused Roger Allen, M.D., with Ralph Allen, D.D., S.J., just as the autho- rities of the English College at Rome did. JOHN B. WAINEWBIGHT.

STINGING NETTLES, BEE-STINGS, AND RHEUMATISM (US. xii. 298). Though the reference is not strictly apposite, MB. RATCUFFE may find 9 S. xii. 126 to be of interest to him.

JOHN B. WAINEWBIGHT.

THE EFFECT OF OPENING A COFFIN (US. xii. 300). There is the case of the opening of the coffin of King Charles I., which took place on 1 April, 1813.

' An Account of what appeared on the Opening of the Coffin,' &c., by Sir Henry Halford, who was present, was published in 1813.

The body of the king had been embalmed ; but probably this embalming was far from being drastic or complete. Halford says that the body was found

" carefully wrapped up in a cere-cloth, into the folds of which a quantity of unctuous or greasy matter, mixed with resin, as it seemed, had been melted, so as to exclude, as effectually as possible, the external air. The coffin was completely full ; and, from the tenacity of the cere-cloth, great difficulty was experienced in detaching it success- fully from the parts which it enveloped.

"... .When it came off, a correct impression of the features to which it had been applied was

observed in the unctuous substance. At length, the whole face was disengaged from its covering. The complexion of the skua of it was dark and discoloured. The forehead and temples had lost little or nothing of their muscular substance ; the cartilage of the nose was gone ; but the left eye, in the first moment of exposure, was open and full, though it vanished almost immediately ; and the pointed beard, so characteristic of the period of the reign of King Charles, was perfect. The shape of the face was a long oval ; many of the teeth remained ; and the left ear in conse- quence of the interposition of the unctuous matter between it and the cere-cloth was found entire," &c.

I take the above from Halford's original pamphlet, but it has of course been quoted in various books, e.g., in ' A Summer's Day at Windsor,' &c., by Edward Jesse (John Murray, 1841), in which, p. 78, is an illus- tration giving the " Head of Charles the First," i.e., as it appeared on the opening of the coffin. Some fifty years ago I saw in a shop window at Eton a print (coloured, if I remember rightly) representing the face of the king as it then appeared.

ROBEBT PlEBPOINT.

It may be interesting to quote as evidence the following mention of a definite instance. It is found in the ' History of Plymouth,' by the late R, N. Worth, F.G.S., &c., first edition, 1871, p. 276. In the course of a description of the monuments in St. Andrew's Church, Plymouth, reference is made to the " bust of Dr. Zachary Mudge," by Chantrey, and to this the following note is appended :

"In the progress of some alterations in the church several years since, the vault in which Dr. Mudge was buried was opened, and for a moment Mr. Bone caught a glimpse of the old vicar. The next he looked upon a heap of dust."

The Mr. Frederick Bone mentioned was a solicitor and churchwarden.

W. S. B. H.

H. MEIDINGEB (US. xii. 260). According to The Athenaeum for 23 Nov., 1833, the ' Dictionary ' in question "is a work of immense research, and is more practical than similar productions of German scholars usually are."

The very facts that it was translated into French and that the translation reached a second edition in 1836 prove that it was a work of some merit, yet, as the author was only an amateur, the professional philolo- gists of Germany seem to have neglected his book altogether. The great ' Dictionary of German Biography ' gives a short account of him and mentions his books on travels, but is silent about his dictionary. It gives a somewhat longer account of his father,