Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/418

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [a s. ix. MAY 23, 1911.

church of S. Mary at Warwick executed after an unsuccessful attempt in execution of a defective prior design by other hands.' The other hands were those of Sir William Wilson, who built Nottingham Castle, and designed the nave ; and the nave, aisles, and transepts are undoubtedly his."

The most " substantial " authority with which I am acquainted for the statement that Wilson did not design the tower is to be found on p. 34 of vol. i. of ' The Churches of Warwickshire ' (1847) :

" The bills connected with the rebuilding of the Church are in the possession of H. E. Landor, Esq., of Tachbrook. The following particulars have been selected from the building accounts :

" Sir William Wilson's tower y fc failed which should have been 98 feet high with four pinnacles, pticularly

The Hight to y e Nave 45 feet

The part built and pulled down 29 ,, The part left unbuilt 24

New tower hight 98

Church 45 feet

Belfry 21

Chime Hoom 11 ,, Bell Room 40

117

" Sir William Wilson was born in the town of Leicester, and resided at Sutton Coldfield, in this county, where he followed the business of a builder. He married the widow of Henry Pudsey, Esq., of Langley Hall, through whose interest he was knighted at Whitehall, May 3rd, 1081. He built Four Oaks Hall, in the parish of Mutton Coldfleld, for Lord Folliot, which house has since been altered. He died 3rd June, 1710, in his 70th year."

A. C. C.

BOOKS ON LONDON : GREAT CHART (US. viii. 232, 292). If your correspondent will write to me, I shall be happy to send him all the information I have relating to the Crouch family of Great Chart, where they were settled in the fourteenth century. The last date I have of their being at Great Chart is early in the seventeenth century. The name frequently occurs in the church registers in the sixteenth century.

I have some original deeds and copies of others relating to Giles Crouch, who lived in Cornhill, London, and belonged to those of Great Chart. His will, proved in 1599, contains many references to lands, &c., in the latter parish.

Nicholas atte Crouche of Great Chart, so named from his living near the cross, was Sheriff of Kent in 1376-7." He appears to have held other appointments, and was one of the Commissioners chosen to resist the rebels in 1381. CHAS. HALL CROUCH.

62, Nelson Road, Stroud Green, N.

"AMONG THE BLIND THE ONE-EYED MAN is KING " (11 S. ix. 369). Edmund Campion's quotation is taken "from Erasmus's ' Chili - ades Adagiorum,' No. 96 of the fifth Cen- turia of the third Chilias, of which this is the- text :

Inter ccecos regnat Sirdbus.

'Ev rots rbirois rdv rv\wv \dfj,ui> (3a. In regione caecorurn rex est luscus. Inter indoctos, qui semidpctus est, doctissimus habetur. Inter mendicos, qui paululum habet nummorum,. Croesus est. Sapit vulgi foecem." I can go no further than this, nor say where Erasmus (1467-1536) obtained his* Greek quotation from.

The saying is, anyhow, a very old one, and to be found with pretty well all nations, Eastern and others. The French say :

" Au royaume (or au pays) des aveugles les borgnes sont rois,"

and

" Au pays d 'aveugles, bienheureux qui a un ceil."

The Spaniards :

" Mas vale tuerto che ciego."

In addition to the two English forms already given, there is :

" A man were better be half blind than have both his eyes out."

The same idea has inspired Juvenal in Sat. X. 227-8 :

ambos Perdidit ille oculos et luscis invidet ....

H. GOUDCHAUX. Paris.

MR. WAINE WRIGHT asks who originated this saying. The origin of proverbs is too often, like Mr. Yellowpluslrs " buth," " wrapped up in a mystry."

Bebel, ' Proverbia Germanica,' No. 226, has " Inter caecos unoculus rex est " ; and Suringar's annotated edition furnishes abun- dant parallels from French, German, Dutch, and Swiss collections e.g., " Borgne est roy entre aueugles," from the ' Proverbia Gallicana' of 1519. Erasmus, * Adagia,' " Inter caecos regnat strabus," is referred to for the proverb 'Ev TOIS TOTTOIS run/ rv\iov pao-iAcvei, where Aa/ztov should be, from Michael Apostolios, vii. 23. EDWARD BENSLY.

In his c Jacula Prudentum ' (1640) George Herbert has " In the kingdom of blind men the one-eyed is king." Sir William Temple in his 'Miscellanea ' (1696), 2nd part, 4th ed., p. 342, says, "For among the blind, he that has one eye is a Prince."

G. L. APPERSON.