Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/505

 ii s. xn. DEO. K, i9i5.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Vicar, and 6s. 8d. to the Church " ad unum Arche ibidem faciendum." Sparsholt was John Fromond's home, and there was evi- dently an intimate connexion between the two men.

Let us now see what can be learnt about Heete's .Register from the Hall-book of 1414-5. The book begins with a list of seventy Scholars, of whom twenty-one are marked " re " (recessit) to indicate that they vacated during the year ; and it ends with a list of sixty-five Scholars, seventeen of them being marked " venit " or " venit hoc anno." These new-comers in the order of their admission were :

1. Aas ; 2. Ringwode ; 3. Beele or Bele, who was a Commoner before his admission as Scholar in the 8th week of the 1st quarter ; 4. Andrew ; 5. Tyler ; 6. Smyth ; 7. Tygale ; 8. Godard, previously a Quirister ; 9. Foche ; 10. Knyght ; 11. West or Weste, who in the 2nd week of the 2nd quarter for 1415-6 either began to be called Weston or gave place to a successor of that name ; 12. Bradmer ; 13. Boteley ; 14. Derby ; 15. Thomas London ;

16. Wakefeld, previously a Commoner (he was William Wakefeld, and not Walter, as he is miscalled in Kirby's ' Scholars,' p. 41);

17. Robert Roberd, who came in the final week of 1414-5 and is called Fitzrobert in the books for 1415-6 and 1416-7. Nos. 1 to 13 were admitted under the Election held in Septem- ber, 2 H. V. (1414), and Nos. 14 to 17 under the Election of 3 H. V., which, as the Hall-book diary discloses, was held during the 10th week of the 4th quarter.

Heete arranged these seventeen boys in his Register thus :

(a) He placed under 1 H. V. Nos. 1, 4, 8, and 12, and by limiting his list for 1 H. V. to these four boys entrapped Kirby into saying in his ' Scholars ' (Preface, p. xvii) that " the least number of vacancies in any year was four in 1413."

(6) He placed under 2 H. V. Nos. 2, 5, 6, 7, 10, 13, and his blend of Nos. 11 and 17 ("Robertus Roberd alias Weston"), and so produced a list of only seven boys for 1414.

(c) He placed No. 3 (Bele) under 13H. IV., and Nos. 9 (as "Fysshe") and 16 (Wake- feld) under 3 H. V. He ignored Nos. 14 and 15 (Derby and London).

I will conclude with a few observations upon this arrangement :

1. What seems to have happened to Heete in his dealing with the boys mentioned in (a) and (b) is as follows. Having got the boys into an order depending upon their Christian names, he entered the first four,

three Johns and one Richard, under 1 H. V. But by the time that he had reached this-: point in his work, he must have discovered that he was a year out in his chronology.- He thereupon broke off his list for 1 H. V.,. and used the remaining boys (three Roberts, two Thomases, and two Williams) to make his list for 2 H. V. In that way, by turning one year into two, he set his chronology fairly right for the future, but he made no apparent attempt to correct the dating of his earlier lists. The correction would have sadly marred the neatness of his Register,, and I imagine that neatness appealed to him more than strict chronological accuracy. Had he been deeply attached to the latter,, he would scarcely have adopted his own alphabetical system, one merit of which was- that it helped to conceal chronological flaws.

2. His omission of Derby and London may have been intentional. These boys were proteges of Beaufort, and had come in the 12th week of the 3rd quarter of 1414-5 as Commoners " missi per dominum." The Bishop's patronage evidently won for them the highest places at the ensuing Election. But as they disappeared very soon after the commencement of the Hall-book for 1415-6 r I infer that the College authorities managed to oust the boys on the ground that they had not been elected statutably. We have here an early incident which belongs to the story of royal and episcopal nominations as told in Kirby's 'Annals,' 73-77.

3. Every Scholar, as soon as he was 16 years old, had to take an oath of obedience to the College Statutes, and the practice of recording the ceremony in " Register O " was begun in January, 1413/4. Register O therefore supplies means of testing Heete's. "Robert Roberd alias Weston." Heete gives us :

(a) Under 2 H. V. : " Robertus Roberd alia* Weston de Southwerk : recessit eodem anno quo admissus est."

(6) Under 3 H. V., but out of alphabetical order and at the end of the list, as if the proper placa for the name were a matter of doubt : " Robertus Weston de Southwerk Wynton. dioc. : recessit a r. r. H. V ei viij mense Februarii."

But Register O, in its contemporary and therefore more trustworthy records, states that " Robertus Fyztrobard de Cryschurche com. Sutht." took the oath on 12 Feb.,. 1416/7, and that "Robertus Weston de parochia sancti Olavi in Suthwerk Wynton. dioc." took it on 19 July, 1418. Conse- quently the details which Heete supplies- about Roberd (Fitzrobert) are probably incorrect. H. C.

Winchester College.