Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/369

 s. VIL MAY 10, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

365

1577, from Audoenus Ludovicus, Arch- deacon of Cambrai (i.e., Owen Lewis, B.C.L., sometime Fellow of New College, Oxford, and subsequently Bishop of Cassano), to Dom Cesare Speciano, protonotary apostolic at Milan, as follows :

" I wish to recommend to you Dom John Berbloeum, an English clerk of Rochester, doctor of Common Law, who spent five years at Bologna and took an excellent degree, and won great applause to the glory of that University by his public disputations at the reopening of the studies or the arrival of students from some other University or any public function in the schools. He is learned in philosophy, skilled in law, a fluent speaker, modest, gentle, upright, of keen intelli- gence, sound judgment and a hard worker, and indefatigable. His father frequently called him home to England, as it were to the fleshpots of Egypt, but he remained in voluntary exile for the sake of the Catholic faith. He wishes to devote the remainder of his days, I believe he is barely forty, to the ecclesiastical life, if he can find a suitable benefice or office worthy of his education, and he might even bring over his father to the Catholic communion if what was given to him might suffice for both. I have tried long and often at Rome for him, but have not yet succeeded. Cardinal Paleotus [i.e., Gabriele Paleottil favours him and has often used his work, but has not yet provided for him, perhaps from lack of oppor- tunity. The whole Christian world knows the great qualities of Cardinal Borromeo, the light of our age, and I doubt not that he can find a place for a labourer in the Lord's vineyard worthy of this man ; I ask for this, and shall esteem it a favour to myself. T have no doubt that it will redound to the service of the Church of God.

" From my house at Rome, the 28th June, 1577."

There can be no doubt that " Berbloeum ' is a misreading for Berbloeum, i.e. Bearblock The * Concertatio Ecclesise ' mentions a John Berbloke, doctor of law, as an exile Among the wills, either original or copies preserved at the English College, Rome, in 1838, was one " 1588, Joannis Berblochi Angli " (see Collect Topog. e.t Oenealog., v 87) ; so it is to be presumed he died there.

A relative, Thomas Bearblock, was com mitted to the Counter in Wood Street on 12 or 22 Sept., 1586, and on 30 Nov following the Council ordered him to be continued in prison, with this note : " HJ travelled into Itallie to obtaine relief by means of the Catholiques there. He offreth conformitie " (Cath. Rec. Soc., ii. 260 263,264,269).

JOHN B. WAINE WKIGHT.

THE ' STAMFORD MERCURY.' One of the oldest copies of a provincial news- paper in the British Museum Library is the Stamford Mercury, published 22 May,

1718 (vol. xi. No. 21). It is in a small volume containing four consecutive numbers, ind was exhibited at the conference of the nstitute of Journalists held in London, 893 (cf. ' Ency. Brit.,' xxxi. 173 b, and Fenland N. & Q., April, 1901, art. 886). As I have recently bought four copies, all dated tw T o years earlier, viz., 10, 22, 31 May, and 7 June, 1716, it may be useful to de- icribe them.

The title-pages are precisely similar to ing), as follow :
 * he B.M. copies (except dates and number-

Stamford Mercury :

Being

Historical and Political Observations

on the Transactions of Europe

Together with Remarks on Trade.

Thursday, May 10, 1716.

Vol. VII. No. 19

[Woodcut.]

Printed by Tho. Baily and Will. Thompson, at

Stamford in Lincolnshire, 1716.

Price Three Half-pence.

It is a small quarto of twelve pages. The chief interest, it seems to me, of these discovered copies is that they confirm the opinion that this newspaper was numbered in half-yearly volumes, and if all the previous volumes were similarly issued, this would give us the date of the first number Thurs- day, 1 (3) January, 1713. To complete the dates of the various years preceding my copies of vol. vii. and the B.M. copies of vol. xi., I subjoin the assumed list of half- yearly volumes :

Vol. I. Jan. to June, 1713

II. July to Dec., 1713

III. Jan. to June, 1714

IV. July to Dec., 1714 V. Jan. to June, 1715

VI. July to Dec., 1715

VII. Jan. to June, 1716

VIII. July to Pec., 1716

IX. Jan. to June, 1717

X. July to Dec., 1717

XI. Jan. to June, 1718

Which seems convincing proof that the volumes were numbered half-yearly, and that the earliest date of the Stamford Mercury was 1713 (or 1712 legal style), and not 1695, as is still maintained by some authorities. Whether the present Lincoln, Rutland, and Stamford Mercury is a direct descendant of these 1716 and 1718 copies is most doubtful, but another question.

HERBERT E. NORRIS. Cirencester.