Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 4.djvu/262

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NOTES AND QUERIES. m s. iv. SEPT. 23, 1911.

26 June, 1861. It included several important specimens of Grinling Gibbons. The cata- logue contains a number of illustrations.

W. ROBERTS. 18, King's Avenue, Clapham Park.

" APSSEN COUNTER" (10 S. xii. 349; 11 S. i. 116 ; iv. 217). The suggestion that " apssen " can refer to abseys, i.e. to A-B-C, seems to me to be obviously inade- quate, and indeed impossible, since this does not account for the final n. The suffix -en, as in wood-en, wooll-en, &c., is adjec- tival, being cognate with the Lat. suffix -inus, and usually means " made of." I take apsen (the second s being super- fluous) to be merely the usual old spelling of aspen, which is short for aspen-tree.

"Aspen is an adj., like (/olden, and is used tor aspen-tree, from M.E. a*p ; cf. Chaucer, 'Cant. Tales,' 7249. A.-S. cespe, ceps. Allied to Dutch e.sp, Icel. asp, Dan. and Swed. asp ; G. espe, aspe." Skeat, ' Concise Etym. Diet.,' Oxford, 1911.

See also lime (2), lind, lind-en, in the same> pp. 295, 296. WALTER W. SKEAT.

As this query has just received a fresh reply, I should like to say that there is no doubt that the answer given at 11 S. i. 116 is correct, that is to say, that the counter was made of aspen wood. In Kentish parish books in the middle of the eighteenth century one frequently finds " apps timber " or even " epps timber," and even to-day this form is by no means obsolete. According to the ' N.E.D.,' one of the O.E. forms was " seps." PERCY MAYLAM.

Canterbury.

URBAN V.'s FAMILY NAME (11 S. iv. 204). The suggestion that Guillauine Grimoard, Pope Urban V.'s patronymic, was, in reality, Grimaldi is ingenious. But how about the Grimoards of Fronsac (Perigord) ? Pope Urban' s father was a Grimoard, lord of Grisac and Bellegarde, in the diocese of Mende. These Gevaudan Grimoards bore Gules, a chief dancetty or, as distinguished from the Argent, a chief dancetty azure, of the Perigourdin family. From this armorial variation J. Mallat, writing in the Bulletin of the Soc. Histor. et Archeol. du Perigord (xxiii., 198, 1896), argues that Fronsac threw off a branch which estab- lished itself in the Limosin (where it can be traced in ^the twelfth century), whence the line of Gevaudan, in which district it was firmly rooted at the time of Guillaume Grimoard' s elevation to the Papacy. He cites a statement that this line of Grisac

in the Gevaudan came " ex militaribus de Segur qui Grimoardi cognominantur." Segur is in the Bas-Limousin. Moreover, an in- scription " qu'on lisait " in the cloister of the Augustines at Toulouse ran " Urbanus Papa Quintus Lemovicensis," &c.

Albanes' paper, ' Recherches sur la famille de Grimoard et sur ses possessions terri- toriales au XIV e siecle,' was published in the Bulletin of the Society of the Lozere (xvii, 79, 1866) ; the same journal contains (v, 78, 1854) a notice of the discovery of the tomb of Pope Urban' s parents.

To resume, L. M. R. has to prove that all these Grimoards were of the Grimaldi stock. Armorially, the theory he bases upon the name variations or spellings gains in plausi- bility when the dancetty chief of Grimoard is compared with the jusilly coat of Grimaldi that is, from the standpoint of early " cadency." But his theory is as yet only stated ; the likeness of the names proves nothing. And the Grimaldis were surely not quite one of " the most powerful of the mediaeval septs." As regards Grimaldo of Spain, is it proved that the Marques de Grimaldo (temp. Philip V.) was of GrimalcU extraction ? I do not think Saint-Simon imagined so. Of course, the marquis bore the jusilly. SICILE.

I perceive that L. M. R. accepts Onuphrius Panvinius's 'Epitome' (1559) as his autho- rity for the spelling of Grimaldi, the family name of Urban V. Had my old friend Grissell still lived, he might have added his special knowledge to the question of the Pope's origin. Under my eyes I have not the ' Epitome,' nor Panvinius's Latin Life of Urban V. But I possess this Jesuit writer's 'De Ludis Circensibus et de Tri- umphis,' which contains many woodcuts of Rome in the sixteenth century, showing the destruction of numerous monuments since that period. This author was born at Verona in 1529, and died in Palermo in 1568, producing in less than forty years a voluminous series of publications. His ' Epitome,' quoted by L. M. R., extended from St. Peter up to Pope Paul IV., and was published in Latin at Venice in 1573 after his death. WILLIAM MERCER.

LIEUT. -CoL. OLLNEY (11 S. iv. 48). John Harvey Ollney (1774-1837) entered the 82nd Foot as Ensign in 1802, but on its reduction the same year he entered the 9th Foot, and was placed on half -pay in 1803. He then served in the Royal South Gloucester Militia as Major and as