Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/270

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NOTES AND QUERIES, tu s. vn. APRIL 5, i9is.

Hie sitse snnt Reliquiae Mag. Tho. Shepley nuper de Upper Hall in Mirfeild qui obiit Jul. 28 An Dnj 1701 .Et. suaa 55.

Thus shall thy Corps to Dust Returne, Thy Ashes ly in death's darke Urne, And sure thou art amonge y e dead

To have a house. Thy grave for bed. Hear now this speaking' grave I say, Repent, beleive, and work to-day.

Sacred to the memory of Richard Shepley of Over Hall, who departed this life the llth day of May, 1822, in the 55th year of his age.

Reader ! the friend intombed beneath,

While standing near, sunk down in death.

While noting where a corpse should lay,

Himself became to death a prey.

solemn scene ! Mortals beware.

Repent, for sudden death prepare.

" F ABE WELL, VAIN WOULD." In The

Leeds Mercury of 3 May, 1726, it is stated that William Lenton, apothecary at St. Ives, 26 years old, composed the epitaph " Fare- well, vain World, I have known enough of thee," &c., the night before his execution.

G. D. LTJMB. Leeds.

CURIOUS EPITAPHS. Nacton in Suffolk is celebrated as having been the place of residence of Admiral Edward Vernon, the victor at Porto Bello in 1739; as being the birthplace of Sir Philip Broke, the com- mander of the frigate Shannon, with which he captured the Chesapeake in 1813; and also as the birthplace of Margaret Catchpole, and the home where the greater part of her early life was spent.

There is a mural tablet in the church to the memory of the above-mentioned Sir Philip Broke, who died at Nacton.

There are also in the churchyard an ex- ample (lacking the last two lines) of the "Blacksmith" epitaph given at 11 S. v. 505, to one Joshua Mellor(d. 1880) ; and, at the west end, on a headstone, erected by Sir Robert Harland to the memory of William Scott, who died 8 May, 1847, in his eighty- econd year, the following lines :

" Stranger, pause one moment, and read the tribute of a grateful master to a faithful honest servant, who lived in his father's family and his for upwards of seventy years as game and Park keeper, and who attended him, he may say, every time he shot at home for full sixty-three years, hardly having had three days' illness following, and never having left home but with his master during that long period. As a token of sincere regard, Sir Bob* Harland has caused this stone to be erected to him.

" Peace to his memory."

Within the church is a tablet, affixed to the north wall, to the memory of Thomas Hewlett, M.D., who died in 1711, and of his son, Thomas Hewlett, A.M., Rector of

Bucklesham, who died in the year 1773, aged 66 years. After a laudatory descrip- tion of the piety of the departed, the inscription concludes as follows:

" Use Gastrell's Christian Institutes, or Maple- toft's Principles and Duties with the Prayers."

Wimborne Minster.

JAS, M, J s FLETCHER,

SIGNS OF THE FIFTEEN LAST DAYS OF THE WORLD. These signs are described in mediaeval literature, and represented in art. They were supposed to have been ascertained by St. Jerome from books of Jews. There is a triptych representing them in the Liebfrauenkirche at Oberwesel. At the beginning of the series St. Jerome is repre- sented with a book before him, and over him the inscription :

" De signis xv dierura. Jeronimus in anwalibus hebreorttm wvenit signa xv dierpn. ante diem iu- dicii. Sed vtruwi coratinui futuri sint dies illi an iuterpolati now expressit."

In a book that I saw in 1885 in a show- case in the Archbishop's library at Utrecht I noted :

" Signa quindecim horribilia de fine miwdi, et extreme judicio. Paulus hieronymus ita dicunt gregpriusqite. Non mihi scribenti tu lector crede, sed illis."

I should like to know what this book was, if any one can identify it.

In the collected works of the Venerable Bede, under ' Collectanea et Flores,' we find the list of the fifteen signs, with the state- ment that Jerome found them " in annalibus Hebraeorum " (ed. Colon., 1612, iii. 494; Migne, 'P.L.,' No. 94, col. 555). I find that they are given in English in Rolle of Hampole's * Pricke of Conscience,' as Jerome " had sene in som bokes of the Hebriens." I have never been able to find anything about these signs in Jerome's works, nor yet in those of Gregory. The " Paulus " named in the book at Utrecht cannot be the Apostle, but may, perhaps, be Paul the Deacon (8th cent.), who quotes a passage from the Sibylline Oracles, Book VIII. (2nd cent.), mentioning some of the signs, which seem not to have been brought up to the number of fifteen at the earlier date. These verses made an enduring im- pression on the mind of Christendom ; they are quoted in Eusebius, ' Constantini Ora- tio ' ; and St. Augustine, ' De Civ. Dei,' Lib. XVIII. cap. 23 ; and are referred to in the famous Dies irce, 'Teste David cum Sibylla.' I may just remark that the fifteen signs are represented in a window at All Saints', North Street, York, with English verses.