Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/447

 12 S. I. JUNE 3, 1916.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

441

LONDON, SATURDAY, JUNE 3 t 1916.

CONTENTS.-No. 23.

NOTES : The Basins given by Henry VI. to Winchester College, 441 "Pamphlet": Origin of the Word, 443 Sherwood Family: Sixteenth-Century Recusants, 445 Some Irish Family Histories' Arymes Prydein Vawr Sir Walter Scott: an Unpublished Letter, 446 "Clap- trap " " Entire," 447.

QUERIES : Two Anonymous Novels Mirror Ghosts River Brent "She braids St. Catherine's tresses," 447 John Paine or Payne Coronation Mugs and Beakers Authors Wanted " Sea-board " and " Sea-bord "Eliza- beth West, Thief, 448 Richard Parry Major Parsons Richard Relhan Author Wanted : Lines on Spring Old MS. Music in Paris Enlistment as a Birthday Celebra- tion ' Amusing and Instructive Fables in French and English 'Knighthood and Coat Armour, 449.

REPLIES : Parishes in Two Counties, 450 Lilian Adelaide Neilson, 452 Sussex Windmills Leitner " To box Harry" Driden: Dryden, 453 'The Standard ' Sir Robert Mansel Eighteenth-Century Virginian Letters A a Epigram by Julius Caesar Scaliger, 454 William Bromley Chester, M.P. Family of John Walker Edwin Edwards, Etcher Bibliography of Spanish Literature- Cleopatra and the Pearl Sir John Schorne. 455 ' A Simple Story' Tavolara : Goust: Small Republics Joseph Bramah, 456 " Jerry - Builder " Harlington, Middlesex Fourteenth-Century Stained Glass Family Portraits mentioned in Wills, 457 Robert Lucas de Pearsall, Musical Composer Newcome's School, Hackney, and Samuel Morland "Correi" "Bevere" " Honest Injun," 458.

NOTES ON BOOKS : ' The Supernatural in Tragedy ' ' Bibliographical List of Books connected with Barnsley ' ' Records of Flixton ' ' Scandinavian Names in Norfolk.'

Notices to Correspondents,

THE BASINS GIVEN BY HENRY VI. TO WINCHESTER COLLEGE.

DURING the visits which he paid to Win- chester between (say) 1440 and 1452, Henry VI. marked his affection for Wyke- ham's College by several splendid gifts to the Chapel. One of these gifts was a pair of silver-gilt basins, each of which bore in its centre the arms of England and France, and had, engraved upon its rim, an inscription in mediaeval Latin verse. The object of this article is to elucidate the meaning of the latter part of the inscription, which aimed at letting posterity know the date of the gift.

The basins themselves probably went back to the melting-pot about the year 1 563, when Edward VI. 's commissioners seized and

carried off the College plate. But a copy, a slightly faulty copy, of the inscription upon their rims has been preserved in the inventory of " Jocalia et Vasa argentea," begun by Heete and continued by others in our old Register, the ' Liber Albus.' The entry runs thus :

" Item j par Pelvium de Argento deauratc_cum Armis Anglie et francie in medio ex dono xpian issimi Principis Regis Henrici vj tl In quarum circumferenciis sculpuntur versus, viz ; Principis Henrici dedit aurum gratia sexti: En formata suo munere vasa duo; Trans mundi metas sua felix splendeat etas. G iunctis mille quater ' x tot xj quater, ille. Annus erat domini. bis suus x' ter et : j . lux fuit undena tune dupla Novembria plena. Et ponderant ix Ib. viij unc. et iij quartron. de ponderetroie prec. Ib. cum factura Ixs. Sumrna xxixfo'. iijs. ixrf."

It would appear from this entry that the inscription on the basins consisted of six lines of verse, that every verse had its own self-contained jingle, and that the author's idea had been to produce a couple of triads, each composed of two hexameters with a pentameter between them. The second triad was to record the date of the gift by indicating (1) the year of our Lord in the fourth line, which (as it stands in the entry) does not scan ; (2) the King's own regnal year in the latter part of the fifth line ; and (3) the very day, which (as the sixth line shows beyond dispute) was a day in the month of November. Before stating my own view as to what date was thus to be indicated, I will mention the view which has long been regarded as correct. It is ex- pressed in a note which was appended to the original entry by Charles Blackstone, who nourished as a Fellow of the College during the second half of the eighteenth century, and his note is this :

" Through the inaccuracy of the writer, oneo t e hexameters and one of the pentameters (in which is described K. Henry 6 th ' 8 gift of two silver basins on the page immediately preceding) are embarassed and unintelligible in their present form. But on examination of a MS. in the British Museum, the true reading has been discovered, and is as follows : viz.,

Principis Henrici dedit aurum Gratia sexti,

En formata suo munere Vasa duo. Trans mundi metas sua felix splendeat etas. C junctis mille quater, X tot, V, I quater, ille

Annus erat Domini ; bis suus X, ter II, I.

Lux fuit undena tune dupla Novembria plena.

" The meaning is A. Domini 1449. Anno Regni 27.

The Society is obliged to the Rev d D r Chandler,

Fellow of Magd. Coll. Oxon., for this explanation."

As Kirby stated in his ' Annals ' of the College (p. 194), the Dr. Chandler of Black- stone's note was Richard Chandler, the