Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/339

 n s. vi. OUT. 5, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Chapel, Mayfair. He died, I believe, in the nineties.

The Rev. Denis Carey held the living from 1873 to 1879, when he exchanged with the Rev. William Ffolliott, and proceeded to the vicarage of Baildon, near Leeds.

JOHN T. PAGE.

on

The Royal Charters of the City of Lincoln, Henry 11 to William, 111. Transcribed and translated with an Introduction by Walter de Gray Birch. (Cambridge University Press.)

THE twenty-eight documents here put within reach of the student are of first-rate importance. The author has drawn for his Introduction to some extent upon the ' History of the Boroughs and Corporations of the United Kingdom,' by Merewether and Stephens (1835), and also ac- knowledges indebtedness to the labours of the Rev. W. D. Macray. The Introduction other- wise excellent seems to have been designed as an address to be delivered to the citizens of Lincoln, and, not having been modified for its present purpose, reads somewhat awkwardly. The earlier charters regulate the internal government of the city, and confer upon it privileges in its relation to the King ; later and more interesting ones are concerned with the wider aspects of its trade particularly of the trade in wool and in regard to this latter we are given a particularly valuable document in the undated ' Constitutions of the City of Lincoln ' (belonging probably to Edward II.), which contain directions concerning the lawful mingling and sorting of wools. To enforce these measures inspectors were appointed, and it m&y interest those of our correspondents who have lately been discussing the word " broker," and have not yet come across this document, to learn that the word used for these officers is ' : abbrokeurs."

The mediaeval charters, heavily paid for and slowly extending by Inspeximus and additional privileges the liberties of the city, may be said to culminate with the 1515 charter of Henry VIII., granted six years after the Great' Pardon now lost which the prudent authorities procured for themselves upon the King's accession, probably at no small cost, that they might not be harassed with threata and suspicions of treason and in- difference. The charter of Edward VI. is con- cerned with other matters : with Church reform in the sense of uniting parishes, and, alas ! pulling down superfluous churches, because " the great ruyne and decay " of the city had brought it to pass that some of the benefices within it " are not a competent and honest lyving for a good curate, and no personne will take the cure of them." The next charter of capital importance is the Charter of Incorporation by Charles I., dated in the fourth year of his reign, which establishes the council of the 'city and its municipal officers, and was the instrument under which the city was governed until 1834. This was surrendered, with all previous charters, in 1684 to Charles II., and by him renewed, with some additional privi- lege?, and also with a reservation to the Crown

of power by order in Privy Council to remove all or any of the officers of the city at the King's free will and pleasure.

The last of the royal charters is King William's grant of a yearly horse and cattle fair.

Mr. Birch notes carefully the state of preserva- tion of each document, and any interesting detail connected with it the state of the seal, the box it is kept in, &c. and gives four facsimiles, from the earlier charters, well chosen to display the beautiful manuscript.

THE October Cornhill Magazine is one of the best of the year. Mr. Edmund Gosse's ' Swin- burne at Etretat ' recounting the meeting of Swinburne and Maupassant, and giving Mau- passant's keen and telling portrait of the poet has in itself enough interest to justify the number. Mr. Gosse quotes passages from a poem, ' Remi- niscence,' which, he says, Swinburne, " for some reason or other," would not have included in any of his volumes. Biographically it is doubt- less of value ; considered as poetry, we agree with the author's implied rejection of it. ' On a Marble Stair,' by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, is a sketch (lively in colouring and of a pleasant humanity, if rather unskilful in composition) of a way of life which the general public knows little of the Italian boatmen and their barques, " Scottish-built and Italian-owned, which come to us in ballast, and depart with cargoes of China clay for the Mediterranean." Dr. Paget's ' Genius of Pasteur,' somewhat too fulsomely laudatory, and making much of matters long since within every tolerably educated person's knowledge, is yet inspiriting where it outlines the vastness of the work which has grown out of Pasteur's. We should like to know where Judge Parry got his idea of ' John Honorius ' from ; it is some time since we have read anything so made up of curious and delicate flavours as this is. Culinary meta- phor, as the reader will discover, is the only appropriate one here. Of value as adding to the general knowledge of a scheme of things already passed away is Mr. H. G. Archer's ' Ernest Struggles,' a description of the book written by an ex-stationmaster on the G.W R in 1879, which the G.W. Company of the day contrived to suppress. It was discussed in our columns at 11 S. ii. 68, 114, 136, 253, and

has many good stories in it passages too

which may well cause us to admire the long-s suffering alike of the travelling public and the railway servant. Sir Henry Lucy, whose ' Sixty Years in the Wilderness ' we miss, con- tributes instead a detailed and interesting account of wine-growing in France. Mr. T. C. Fowle tells of a visit to ' Port Lockhart and Dargai,' in which the best part is the scene in a little village where the writer, by his knowledge of the Koran and his reference to " Hindu superstition,'' induced a Mohammedan to alter his idea that the touch of Christian lips would defile his precious bowl, the one vessel at hand for the party to drink from. In Miss Marjorie Bowen's ' God's Playthings ' the hero is Monmouth.

The Fortnightly Review for this month opens with Mr. Edward Legge's justification of King Edward VII. as against the portrayal of him in the ' D.N.B.' There runs through the paper the unmistakable note of direct knowledge, and this gives it force. Good incidents and stories are forthcoming, and specially good is the King's