Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/219

 us. vi. AUG. si, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

179

Castle against the Irish rebels in the yea 1642. He received as his reward from th< Earl five pounds in money and " a cloak o mine of black Waterford frieze lined through out with black tuftaffety."

B. USSHEB.

JJo&s 0n HBooks.

Calendar of the Fine Rolls. Vol. II. Edward II.

A.D. 1307-19. Calendar of the Close Rolls

Edward III. Vol. XIII. A.D. 1369-74.

Calendar of the Patent Rolls. Henry V. Vol. II

A.D. 1416-22. (His Majesty'sJStationery Office.

IT is well known that the publication of these

Calendars of the Rolls preserved in the Public

Record Office constitutes the most importam

work ever undertaken in this country in the way

of making original sources accessible to the

ordinary student. To labour this point further

would be entirely superfluous; we have but to

notice, and to welcome, the appearance of these

three new volumes.

The text of vol. ii. of the Fine Rolls was pre- pared by Mr. A. E. Bland, with the assistance of Mr. A. E. Stamp. Besides matters of merely technical interest it gives us, though not in such abundance as do the Close and Patent Rolls, many a vivid detail which may help to fill in the picture of mediaeval England for others than the professed historical scholar. Thus we have the Mayor and Aldermen of London fined for the breaking by night of a certain earthen wall opposite the outer part of the Tower of London; a grant to secure Lincoln Cathedral against various extortions and malpractices on the part of the King's representatives, whereby its woods and groves had suffered loss; and the order in the April before Bannockburn to the Sheriff of Middlesex and all the other sheriffs throughout England to summon " all ecclesiastical persons and women and other persons unable to labour in his bailiwick .... to go with the King to repress the rebellion of Robert de Brus, the King's traitor. .. .or to come to the Exchequer. .. .to make fines for their services." (Bannockburn sug- gests Flodden and we may note, that the name Marmion occurs some half-dozen times in this volume). Other instances are the order to the Sheriff of Essex to take into the King's hand the lands of a certain William the Plommer, who, having to render account for divers lands," wanders from county to county with no small sum collected from the issues of those lands that he may not be found and brought to the King " to render it; the order to the Sheriff of Berks to take into the King's hand the lands and goods of those " who have pre- sumed to joust at Redynges contrary to the King's prohibition "; and a grant to Richard de Redingges ''of the keeping of the small scale for weighing silk in London." The tin mines of Cornwall and a silver mine supposed to have been discovered in Shropshire are also the subject of documents. One foreign name of special interest that of the Bardi of Florence we meet with again and again.

Mr. W. H. B. Bird has prepared the text of the new volume of the Close Rolls, and, so far as the mere perusal of the pages enables us to judge, we may congratulate him on having executed his

work with an unusually happy mingling of pre- cision and feeling for rhythm and style, so that t is good to read. The details of interest arc- mostly domestic, notwithstanding the frequert summons to the King's French wars and to the defence of the realm (all men dwelling upon the sea -coast in Kent were in 1372 to "make readv the signals called ' bekynes ' " ) and the divers orders for provisions necessary thereto, among which figure arrows by the hundred sheaves to be furnished by different counties " of good and seasoned wood, and not of green wood, as they will answer it before the King himself."

Irish affairs under William de Wyndesore present a curious and sorry spectacle, so tedious if nothing worse to the government in Eng- land that Richard de Pembrugge was appointed lieutenant in Ireland in his stead, who, however, " utterly refused to take his journey according to the King's command," for which, " in a chamber within his privy palace of Westminster called the ' Oule chambre,' " the King punished him by revoking many gifts and letters patent and grant's- made in his favour. There is an order to the authorities of London 12 June, 1369 on the subject of causing " a competent place without

the city to be appointed for the slaughter of

beasts," and detailing with considerable par- ticularity the sufferings of the inhabitants of parts of London near " Baynardescastell " under the system then prevailing, which order on 20 April, 1370, had been by no means thoroughly carried out, " whereat the King is wroth," and so issued yet another on the subject equally urgent and descriptive. A similar order had also to be dispatched in 1372 to York. On 6 Oct., 1373, the Sheriff of Oxford was commanded " to cause proclamation to be made that all bridges of the rivers of Oxfordshire be speedily repaired .... and that sure signs and posts (piZ/> 3n either side of the said rivers, whereby the bridges and other passages of fords may be more certainly known, be fixed and set up for the King's sport with his hawks in the approaching winter season. . . .so behaving herein that by his default no peril shall befall to the King or others 'n his company or to his hawks."

Aliens are from time to time ordered to be expelled from the realm, as when in 1373 the Prior of the Friars Preachers at Oxford was bidden o remove all alien friars of the King's enemies, who " flock to the said house. . . .there to abide under colour of studying in the L'niversity of Oxford."

An interesting chapter might be written on the

rade details here included, more especially as-

'egards the trade in cloth, and the affairs with

merchants of Italy, Portugal, and " Holand

and Seland "; and another on local disputes,.

which, if not specially numerous, are full of curious;

matter. One such is the dispute, settled in 1372 r

" ictween Adam, parson of St. Michael in the town

f Gloucester, and the burgesses of Gloucester

bout a piece of ground called Seynt Martyn

lace, which had been wrongfully given by the

Ling to the burgesses " in order to build a tower

upon it, and therein to set and maintain a belli

or telling the hours day and night for eveiv

ommonly called a ' clok.' "

The text of the Calendar of Patent Rolls here- jiven is the work of Mr. R. C. Fowler, assisted y Mr. R. F. Isaacson. Amid the wealth of matter