Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/507

 ii s. ix. JUNE 27, ion] NOTES AND QUERIES.

501

LONDON, SATURDAY, JUNE 27, 19U.

CONTENTS. No. 235.

NOTES: The First Marriage of John Ponet, Bishop of Winchester, 501 ' The Times,' 502 Bishop Jewel's Papers, 505 Byron's " Lay " Again "Touching " for the King's Evil, 506 Mountain Meadow Massacre : Father de Smet Legislative Union of England and Scotland- Fielding's ' Tom Jones,' 507 Whist : the Making of Trumps Announcements in Newspaper Office Windows, 508.

QUERIES : Balnes, Laleham, Littlyngton, and Stane 8 Bence Callipedes, 508 Haydon Napoleon III. at Chislehurst : Miss Howard and Comte de Bechevet Cramputius : Simplicia : Q. Crassus Tubero : the Genie Jonquil Mile. Quimbeau The Rose in FitzGerald's Omar' Chatham House Magazine 'Device on Encaustic Tiles, 509 " Master " and " Gentleman " during the Seventeenth Century in England Stubbs's Trade Pro- tection Agency Marquis de Spineto Mansion and St. Eschauzier's Gordon Highlander, 510 Authors Wanted Rixham Fair and Matthew Prior Sixteenth-Century Cardinals Joseph Fox' To One in Paradise ' " Con- damine," 511.

REPLIES : Pallavicini : Jane Cromwell, 511 Missionary Ship Duff Ice: its Uses Christopher Columbus: Nationality and Religion, 512 Shilleto's Edition of Burton ' John Gilpin ' in Latin Elegiacs Weather Prognostications Folkard, the Animal Painter, 513 Cowlard Authors of Quotations Wanted Dr. J. S. Phone", 514 Biographical Information Wanted A Second English Pope ' The Complete Course of Geography ' Robert Stephenson, 515 Scott's 'Rob Roy' Grimol The Adelphi General Beatson : Balaclava, 516 Ante- dated Patent of Nobility Inwood or Inward Family R. Payne Ralph Pykeryng P. Russell Goddard Dunning, Painter, 517" Sough " T. Butler, Winchester Scholar Duke of Sussex : Morganatic Marriages ' Guy's Porridge Pot,' 518.

NOTES ON BOOKS : ' Memorials of St. Margaret's, Westminster' 'Parish Register of the Holy and Un- divided Trinity, Chester ' ' Goode Olde Countree ' ' Florilegio di Canti Toscani.'

OBITUARY : C. A. Ward.

Booksellers' Catalogues.

Notices to Correspondents.

THE TRUE STORY OF THE FIRST

MARRIAGE OF JOHN PONET,

BISHOP OF WINCHESTER.

NICHOLAS SANDERS, in his ' De Origine et Progressu Schismatis Anglicani,' narrates a very gross scandal about Ponet. It has often been repeated, but it is not strictly correct. The words are :

" Poynetus autem, qui locum Episcopi Wintoni ensis occupabat, parum putans uxorem ducere- cum tamen haberi vellet Episcopus, etiam lanionis cuiusdam adhuc viventis uxorem abstulit, eaque illi publicis regni legibus evicta et marito restituta est."

He goes on to give a joke of Gardiner's upon it : "If the butcher got back his wife, may not I get my bishopric again ? "

Sanders clearly implies that Ponet was a married man already, and Bishop of Win-

chester, when he took away the butcher's wife. The legal proceedings, whatever they were, which dissolved the union, were on 27 July, 1551. Ponet was married to Maria Haymonde, or more correctly Heyman, at Croydon, in Cranmer's presence, on 25 Oct., 1551, after the scandal. He was made Bishop of Winchester, by Letters Patent, on 23 March, 1551. So, unless the abduction and the legal proceedings were very expedi- tious, he was not Bishop of Winchester when the scandal began. But though Ponet was an abusive controversialist, and acquiesced in the alienation of episcopal manors, his own interests being provided for, he was a scholar, an able writer, and was honoured by the friendship of good men, and deserves the benefit of the doubt, if the literal meaning of Sanders's story can be shown not to be supported by sufficient evidence. No one need believe Sanders unsupported in such a matter.

But Machyn's Diary says,* under 27 July, 1551 : this day was the Bishop of Winchester " devorsyd from the bochar wyff with shame enog." "Bochar wyff" means a female dealer in meat, and does not imply that she had another husband. But the Grey Friars' Chronicle f so called because it is tacked on to the Register of the Grey Friars in London, and may or may not have been written up year by year by an ex-Grey Friar, it is clearly, like Machyn, anti-Reformation in bias is more explicit. It says :

" The bishop of ["Wychr " is written in above the line] that was than was devorsyd from hys wyffe in Powlles the whyche was a buchers wyff of Nottynggam, and gave her husband e a sartyne mony a yere dureynge hys lyffe as it was jugydde by the lawe."

What happened exactly is still not quite clear. If Ponet married or unmarried before had run away with a married woman, there could be no divorce case tried in the Ecclesiastical Courts at " Powlles " between Ponet and the woman. The butcher, I believe, might have procured a divorce a mensa et thoro in the Ecclesiastical Courts, and'damages against Ponet at Common Law. But both these writers speak clearly of the bishop being divorced, which could not have

Soc., O.S., No. 42. This is genuine Machyn, not an interpolation by Warton. See E. H. R., vol. xi.
 * Cott, MS. Vitellius, F. v. Printed in Camden

t Cott. MS. Vitellius, F. xii. Printed in Cam- den Soc., O.S., No. 53. The editor printed " Win- chester" in full ; it is as in the text in the MS., " Wychr " inserted over the line.