Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/458

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NOTES AND QUERIES. tn s. vi. NOV. 9, 1912.

GREENSTONE (11 S. vi. 329). Probably a variety of jade. So in Cook's ' Voyages '- (1790), i. 125:

" Many of these Indians wore pieces of green- stone round their necks which were transparent, and resembled an emerald. These, being exam- ined, appeared to be a species of the nephritic

stone.'

A. R. BAYLEY.

The stone Raleigh speaks of his actual words are " a kinde of greene stones, which the Spaniards call Piedras Hijadas, and we vse for spleene stones " is nephrite, a species of jade, which had a considerable reputation in medicine. Further on, Raleigh says that Topiawari, when taken by the Spaniards, paid a hundred plates of gold and divers chains of spleen stones for his ransom. The French pharmacist Lemery, in his ' Traite universel des Drogues simples,' says, under Lapis Nephriticus, that, worn round the neck, thigh, or arm, or in finger rings, these stones are esteemed proper for nephritic colic, stone in the kidneys, and other disorders ; adding that some prescribe them for internal use in doses of four or five grains. C. C. B.

ALABASTER EFFIGIES (US. vi. 208, 277). The circumstance of the best - known quarries being at Chellaston, Derbyshire, naturally influences the antiquaries of that county to favour the theory that the mediaeval alabaster workers were asso- ciated with Derbyshire rather than with Nottingham. Such a theory would, indeed, be perfectly reasonable, were it not for ample and incontrovertible documentary evidence that the latter town was the principal seat of this nourishing mediaeval industry. As early as 1371 Peter Maceon or Mason, of Nottingham, was paid a balance of 300 marks (a very heavy sum) for an altarpiece of alabaster placed upon the high altar of the King's chapel of St. George at Windsor. Later references to this old Nottingham business are very numerous in local and other records.

A less well - known circumstance is that several natural outcrops of gypsum, or alabaster, occur in Nottinghamshire itself, and it is within the bounds of possibility that these were drawn upon, instead of the Derbyshire quarries, by the Nottingham artificers, although actual proof is lacking. T,he nearest gypsum mines to Nottingham were (and are) situate in the fabled parish of Gotham, Notts, where they are first mentioned (so far as I can find) in Deering's ' History of Nottingham,' 1751. Barker

(' Walks round Nottingham,' 1835) says : " The village stands upon a rock of ala- baster." ' The Beauties of England and Wales,' 1813, says :

" Court Hill [Gotham] has quarries of gypsum in very large blocks, the strata in some places being three feet in thickness," &c.

The best testimony to the quality of the Notts material, however, is in Lowe's ' Agricultural Survey of Notts,' 1798, as follows :

" Gypsum or plaster. .. .At Bed Hill, at the junction of Trent and Soar, is a fine plaster quarry, from which Mr. Pelham, now Lord Yarborough, had columns of twenty feet high, in three pieces, used in his mausoleum. Lord Scarsdale also used the same in his house at Kedleston [Derbyshire]. Plaster is found also at Great Markham, and the Wheatleys, and in many other places, amongst the red loam, but I do not know of it being got for sale anywhere else than at Newark and Red Hill " [in or adjoin- ing Gotham parish].

A. S.

In the Proceedings of the Historic Society for Lancashire and Cheshire there is a very interesting paper on ' The Alabaster Carved Panels at Lydiate,' which, besides being illustrated, also gives references to other writings on the subject. A. H. ARKLE.

Oxton, Birkenhead.

" TRUMP " AS A CARD TERM (10 S. v. 148, 239). An earlier vise of this term than that well-known one of Latimer's in the ' Sermon on the Card,' 1529 (given by MR. JESSEL), is by Michel Menot (1440-1518) in one of his sermons. I have not the exact date. Perhaps some of your readers can supply it. It was written in the fifteenth century.

J. S. McTEAR.

6, Arthur Chambers, Belfast.

BURIAL-PLACE OF MARY DE BOHUN (US. vi. 211, 313). The following foot-note from Agnes Strickland's ' Queens of England ' (1844 ed.), iii. 119, favours Leicester:

" Henry V.'s mother was buried within King's College, Leicester. He paid for a likeness of her to be placed over her tomb. Pell Rolls."

There is on pp. 70-71 of the same volume, a short biographical note saying that Mary de Bohun " died in the bloom of life in 1394, leaving six infants."

Weever says she was buried at Canterbury, but this is refuted at 8 S. vi. 378-9.

THOMAS WM. HUCK. Saffron Walden.

Mary de Bohun died in 1394. and was buried in King's College, Leicester, and not in- Canterbury Cathedral, as stated by Sandford. C. L. LINDSAY.