Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/24

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. ix. JAN. 3, 1914,

that he owed servile customs, &c. (' Cartu- lary of the Monastery of Ramsey,' bk. i. p. 425). And in the year 1315 William Hadeshaw, Hamo Mundi, and John de Flore held H knights' fees in Great and Little Walsingham and Berston (Norfolk), of the honour and castle of Clare (Inquisition taken on the death of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, 8 Edw. II. ). Three hundred years later the name ap- peared at St. John's Stiffkey, Norfolk. In the Hundred Roll of Edward I. a Henry Mundi, son of Simon Mundi, was living at Barnwell by Cambridge ; his grandfather was named Ralph, who had not apparently adopted a surname. And in the year 1307 William Mundy and his wife Amicia, in consideration of ten silver marks, granted to John of Cambridge 3| acres of land in Cam- bridge (Feet of Fines, Cambridge, 35 Ed- ward I.). From these last probably de- scended Mundys afterwards living at Hitchin and at High Wycombe. MONEDEE.

SIR Ross DON(N)ELLY (11 S. viii. 390, 473). None of your correspondents appear to have noticed a pamphlet of 1807 to be found in the British Museum giving " A correct account of the trial at large between Ross Donnelly. . . .pit., and Sir H. Popham." The point at issue was the correct division of the prize-money obtained on Sir Home Popham's naval expeditions.

BRADSTON.

SAMBEL (SUMBEL) : WELLS (11 S. viii. 408, 476). One of Mrs. Wells's escapades is narrated in Fanny Burney's Diary under the date 22 June, 1792. M. H. DODDS.

THOMAS BURBIDGE AND OTHER POETS (US. viii. 428, 470). The following is from the * Sedbergh School Register, 1546-1909 ' :

".Shirt, Theodore, entered August, 1825, age 17; horn at Stourbridge ; left December, 1827 ; St. John's Coll., Cambridge : migrated thence to St. Peter's and Christ's Coll.; B.A.. Sen. Opt., 1832; M.A. 1835. Curate of Sherborne, Warwickshire ; of Rainhill, near Prescot. Afterwards lived at Leamington with no fixed Cure. Died c. 1886."

C. W. RUSTON-HARRISON.

"BALLONI" (11 S. viii. 468). By this is probably meant the game of pallone, quite common to-day in Italy. It consists of a spherical-shaped elastic ball of rubber, nearly the size of a football, and is driven by opposing sides, whose hands are encased in sharp -pointed wooden gloves, somewhat in the manner and according to the rules governing modern lawn tennis. The court

is flanked by a lofty wall on one side towards; the goals. I have seen it practised in Siena, and played in a place called the " Sferisterio ;r at Rome.

T. A. Trollope in his ' What I Remember ' was much puzzled by the use of the above- term easily explainable.

I understand that a similar game is much played by the Peruvian Indians, and spreads through the South American republics of Spanish origin. WILLIAM MERCER.

[PROF. G. C. MOORE SMITH refers the querist to the 'N.E.D.,' *. 'Balloon,' where one or two> sixteenth- and seventeenth-century quotations con- cerning the game will be found.]

0n

Life and Trial of Eugene Aram. By Eric R.. Watson, LL.B. (Hodge & Co.)

BULWER, in his Preface to the 1840 edition of ' Eugene Aram,' says that this trial, " take it altogether, is, perhaps, the most remarkable in the register of English crime," and he describes; Eugene Aram " as a person who, till the detection" of the crime for which he was sentenced," was " of the mildest character, and most unexcep- tionable morals." He further adds that "his guilt or innocence was the matter of strong contest" ? and in the Preface to the edition of 1851 says :

" On going with maturer judgment over nil the evidence oil which Aram was condemned, I have convinced myself, that though an accom- plice in the robbery of Clarke, he was free both from the premeditated design and the actual deed of murder."

Bulwer's novel ' Eugene Aram,' which was published in 1831, went through twenty English editions. Mr. Watson was therefore well advised in including this trial in the " Notable English. Trials Series."

The trial of Eugene Aram took place at York on 3 Aug., 1750, and he was hanged on 6 Aug and gibbeted oil 7 Aug., and until Bulwer's novel appeared no one for many years had seriously called in question the justice of the sentence.

Mr. Watson has had great difficulties to contend with, as there is no full report of the trial anywhere to be found. The opening speech for the Crown by Mr. Fletcher Norton, K.C.,. has not .been preserved, and although we can form an opinion on the evidence he relied upon as confirming the evidence of the approver Houseman, we should like now to see the exact way in which the counsel for the Crown shaped his case. Again, we have no full report of the summing up of the judge, Mr. Justice Noel, who has been, as we think, most unfairly attacked. Mr. Watson states truly that " all contem- porary reports, in vehement contrast to later writei-s, attest Noel's impartiality. ' On the judge's summing up to the jury in the most fair- and candid manner,' observes the York Pamphlet [published in August, 1759], 'they, after a very short consultation, brought him in guilty of murder.' '