Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/301

 12 8. 1. APRIL 8, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

295

but with a difference. The arms of Clare were : Or, three chevrons gules ; which, impaling those of De Burgh, all within a bordure sable, guttee or, constitute the coat of Clare College, Cambridge, to-day. The founder modified them thus : Or, a chevronel per pale gules and azure between two others of the same counterchanged. These arms he imparted with the estates to his College, and these are the proper Merton College arms to-day.

Often, however, the Merton shield is represented as parted per pale, and com- bining the above arms with those of the see of Rochester. The former then are on the sinister side of the shield, the latter (Argent, on a saltire gules an escallop or) the dexter. 'This shield would then represent the arms of Walter de Merton when Bishop of Rochester. A. R. BAYLEY.

[MR. H. J. B. CLEMENTS thanked for reply.]

THE EFFECT OF OPENING A COFFIN (11 S. xii. 300, 363, 388, 448, 465; 12 S. i. 91, 113, 192). I wish to add a few lines to what I con- tributed earlier. When Mrs. Rossetti's coffin was opened in October, 1869, the persons present at the cemetery were Charles Augustus Howell and Dr. Llewellyn Williams. Howell was at that time a general factotum to D. G. Rossetti. Much -about him may be found in W. M. Rossetti's ' Family Letters of D. G. Rossetti.' See specially the letter of D. G. Rossetti to his brother printed under the date Oct. 13, 1869,

A ' Narrative ' of the opening of what was presumed to be Milton's coffin was written by Philip Neve, and published by T. & J. Egerton, Whitehall, in August, 1790. George Daniel had a copy of this pamphlet which had formerly belonged to George Steevens, to Bindley, and to Richard Heber. It was copiously annotated, arid it made the subject of a chapter in George Daniel's ' Love's Labour not Lost,' 1863, pp. 89- 104. The Catalogue of the sale of George Daniel's library in 1864 has reference to it (Lot 1120).

There is a rare pamphlet which I have not been able to see which may, however, be recorded here :

"A narrative of the sacrilegious impiety of John Lamb, sexton, and W. Bilby, gravedigger, of bt. Andrew's, Holborn, in robbing the coffins* in the vaults of the said church. With frontispiece. 1750.

A. L. HUMPHREYS. 187 Piccadilly, W.

There is an account of the opening of the tomb of Job Charnock in Calcutta on Nov. 22, 1892, in Hyde's ' Parochial Annals of Bengal ' (p. 32). It is perhaps too long to quote here, but at a depth of 6 ft. " the mortal part of the Father of Calcutta himself " w&s, " after just two hundred years of burial," revealed to the extent of the largest joint of, probably, a middle finger and " a bone of the left forearm." They were replaced, and no attempt was made to uncover " the rest of the skeleton, perhaps perfect."

The Rev. H. B. Hyde was present on the occasion as the incumbent of the senior chaplaincy of the parish. Not long afterwards he told me personally in Calcutta of the episode. He concludes his account in the ' Annals ' thus :

"With the bones of the famous pioneer's hand

before the writer, and the strange and solemn

statement of his epitaph just above them that he had laid his mortal remains there himself ut in spe beatce resurrectionis ad Christi judicis adventum obdormirent he felt strongly restrained from examining them further."

Traces of the decayed coffin-lid were also noticed. WILMOT CORFIELD,

Calcutta Historical Society.

In the latest volume of his ably condensed and exhaustive ' Churches of Norfolk ' Mr. T. Hugh Bryant tells of an instance of grave- opening which is of importance because of the very early date to which the disturbed burial must be referred.

The paragraph (on p. 171 of the volume just issued under the auspices of the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society) runs thus :

and buckle were found during the excavations necessary for making the railway in August, 1849. They were about seven feet below the surface, and rested on the breast of a human skeleton, quite perfect, but [it] fell to pieces after being exposed to the air."
 * At St. Mary the Virgin, Gissiug, a bronze fibula

It is a thrilling thought that the Norfolk navvies had an opportunity, such as many an antiquary would have been grateful for, of gazing on the undisturbed form of a pre- historic man.

And yet one's awe and wonder die down when the story of St. Cuthbert so vividly told in a recent number of ' N. & Q.' is recalled. For it seems more than possible that the early British saints were in touch with the wearers of fibulae, and that of such were their converts in Britain, as we know that St. Patrick appealed in Ireland to men of the same type. Therefore hard though it be for the ordinary mind to grasp the