Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/329

 12 8. I. APRIL 22, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

323

Howse " at Woodstock, with licence to underlet it (Journal of Education, March, 1908). It appears from a receipt in the possession of Robert Wheler that on July 9, 1579, Thomas Jenkins departed from this school " on receiving 6Z. from John Cottom of London, by whom he was succeeded in the mastership " (Tercentenary vol. ' S.-on-A. Grammar School,' 1853, and J. W. Gray, ibid., 108).

This change in the mastership is confirmed by Mr. Leach from an entry in the Worcester Episcopal Register for Sept. 28, 1579, when " there issued a licence to teach boys licencia erudiendi pueros in the town of Stratford to John Cottam." Mrs. Stopes informs us that Jenkins w r as a married man, for the parish register states that " Thomas, son to Mr. Thomas Jenkins, was baptized 19 Jan., 1577." And both Mrs. Stopes and Mr. Leach see in Jenkins the prototype of Sir Hugh Evans in ' The Merry Wives.' Such adventurous identifications are as fascinating as they are unprovable. It may be so, and, again, it may not be so.

We ask and ask. Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.

It seems safer, if possibly not so exhilarating, to follow modestly in the footsteps of 'Sir Sidney Lee, who, for instance, in his learned and cautious treatment of the difficult problems connected with the Sonnets, has proclaimed himself one of the company of Browning rather than of Wordsworth.

John Cottam, Cottom, Cotton, Colby, apparently stayed as master until 1582-3 ; and Mrs. Stopes (ibid., 245) identifies him with John Cotton, B.A. May 8, 1568, of the Oxford Register but her dates should read June 19, 1566, and the name John Cottamme or Cottetamme which certainly looks like our man (Boase, ibid., 262).

The schoolmaster-usher " Sir Higges," mentioned under 1578, often occurs in the Stratford registers. He signs that of 1603 as " William Gilbard als. Higgs, minister " ; and was in the habit of winding the clocks of the town, and of saving the charges of a notary to his friends by writing their wills. He was certainly twice married, and had several children ; and in the parish registers he is described under three titles in 1578 he was " curat " ; in 1587, " asistant" ; and in 1611 "minister (vicar)." In the last- named year he died (v. Mrs. C. C. Stopes' s poraries,' p. 235 ; and Archdeacon G. Arbuthnot's paper on ' Shakespere's Burial ' in The Treasury Magazine for April, 1916, p; 60).
 * Shakespeare's Warwickshire Contem-

Reading through Mr. Leach's last book,. ' The Schools of Medieval England,' which, unfortunately, he never lived to revise, I have noticed three small slips unmentioned by Mr. A. G. Little in his exhaustive review of the work in The English Historical Review (xxx. No. 119, pp. 525-9). At the top of p. 117, Alexander Neckam, author of ' De Naturis Rerum,' is said to have been born at St. Albans in September, 1157, on the same night as Richard I. was born at Windsor, his mother being wet-nurse to the king. But Richard was born at Oxford in his father's palace of Beaumont.

At the bottom of p. 241 it is said that

" the business of the town [viz., Stratford-on-AvonJ had in the fifteenth century shifted away from there [viz., the College of the Trinity by the old church] southwards towards where the ' birth- place' now is, and the school followed the busi- ness."

Here " northwards towards where the remains of New Place (the scene of Shake- speare's death) now are," would appear to- be more accurate.

At the top of p. 252 Mr. Leach writes of Henry VI.

" making his quondam tutor and chastiser

Duke of Warwick, the first duke in England not of royal blood."

But it was not Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick (1382-1439), who was created duke, but his only son and heir, Henry de Beauchamp (1425-45), by his second wife, Isabella, widow of his cousin Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Worcester. In con- sideration of his father's merits Henry was created premier earl by patent, April 2, 1444, and Duke of Warwick three days later. A. R. BAYLEY.

WHO WAS HOLOFERNES ?

THE editor of * Love's Labour's Lost,' in the " Arden Shakespeare," considers, with some care, various hypotheses concerning the original of Ho lof ernes in ' Love's Labour's Lost.' He mentions John Florio, to reject that possibility, as indeed seems inevitable ; Rombus (from Sir Philip Sidney's ' The Lady of May ') ; Pedantius, the hero of a Cam- bridge Latin drama ; and our old friend Master Tubal Holof ernes, Rabelais's "famous doctor of divinity," who taught Gargantua the alphabet, " taught him so diligently, too, that he could say it backwards," though it is true that this useful feat " took him five years and three months."