Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/419

 12 s. in. SEPT., 1917.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

413

Also there were a concealed clock, whose loud ticking marked the " march of time," a temple with paintings by Hayman, statuary, and a lady's and a gentleman's skull, with suitable memento mori inscrip- tions. It was a lugubrious exhibition, evidently intended for Mr. Tyers's own pleasure in dramatic contrast, and we are not surprised to read : " They were entirely removed by the Hon. Peter King, who, on the death of Mr. Tyers, purchased the estate." Is there any other reference to this place ? AXECK ABRAHAMS.

DIARY OF THOMAS EARL. At 1 S. vii. 206 (Feb. 26, 1853), Q. Q. wrote under this heading :

" Strype (' Annals,' vols. i. and ii.) sometimes refers to a MS. No. 206 in the collection of Moore, Bishop of Ely, which he describes as a Diary (vol. i. pp. 135, 180) kept by Thomas Earl, who was made parson of St. Mildred's, Bread Street, at the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and ' seems to have been a diligent noter of matters of remark concerning religion in his time ' (vol. ii. p. 539). In the ' Catal. Libr. MSS. Angl.,' part ii. p. 366, it is described : ' Short notes of matters relating to the Church by way of annals, written by some that favoured Puri- tanism, from the year 1548 to 1599.' Bishop Moore left his library to the University of Cam- bridge. Is this MS. in their possession, and is it a piece of historic value ? "

Finding no replies to these queries in subsequent volumes of ' X. & Q. ,' I made it my business to seek them elsewhere, be- lieving them to be as welcome to present- day readers as they would have been to Q. Q. sixty-four years ago. Laying the matter, therefore, before Mr. H. G. Atdis, the Secretary of Cambridge University, I re- ceived quite recently the subjoined courteous answer :

" Bishop Moore's library was presented -to the University in 1715, and is now here. The manu- script (Thomas Earl's Note Book) you refer to came with Bishop Moore's library. Its class- mark is Mm. i. 29. I cannot say, of my own knowledge, that it is of ' historic value ' ; but as Thomas Baker, the antiquary, thought it worth transcribing in his historical collections, it may be presumed to be so."

Some of Thomas Baker's valuable tran- scripts have been printed, notably those of Ascham's letters (Harleian MSS., B.M.), together with his own unrivalled ' History of St. John's, Cambridge,' but his "historical collections," including Earl's ' Diary,' seem to be still in quest of a publisher. His 'History' was edited and issued in 1869 by the late Prof. J. E. B. Mayor. Baker was a ceaseless annotator, as well as a tire- less transcriber and accurate scholar, an

instance of which is thus recorded by PROF. MAYOR at 1 S. ix. 588 : " We have at St. John's a copy of Ascham's ' Letters ' (ed. Elstob), with many dates and corrections in Baker's hand." Other like examples are supplied in the ' D.N.B.' Baker closed a useful and laborious life in 1740, set. 84.

J. B. McGovERN. St. Stephen's Rectory, C.-on-M., Manchester.

LONG LEASES. After the Great Weetern Railway had snatched the prize from their rivals, and secured a 999 years' lease of the Bristol and Exeter Railway, one was amused at a shareholder anxiously in- quiring at the next meeting " what would happen at the end of the lease would not the Midland Company then succeed in getting hold of the railway ? "

A much longer lease, however, is men- tioned in Pote's ' History and Antiquities of Windsor ' (p. 23), where it is stated that the corporation granted a lease in 1736, for five thousand years, of some land in the town of Windsor to Lord Chief Justice Reeve for the purpose of erecting a work- house. R- B.

Upton.

[Information on other long leases will be found at 9 S. xii. 25, 134, 193, 234, 449, 513 ; 10 S. i. 32 ; xii. 365.]

" TRAUNSER " : " TRANSOM " : " TRAVER- sm." The word transer, transor, or traunser appears in some documents of the late fifteenth century published in the recent volume of Archceologia Cantiana (xxxu., ' Reculver and Hoath Wills,' edited by Arthur Hussey ; ' Churchwardens' Accounts of the Parish of St. Andrew's, Canterbury,' edited by Charles Cotton). The word must be taken in the sense of bolster, because it is repeatedly used in the description of a bed:

" Two pairs of sheets, pair of blankets, mater- asse and transer," A.D. 145S-9 (p. 126).

" My best kercher save one, table cloth ot two elnys, and the best traunser," A.D. 1509-10


 * " Feather bed, a traunser, sheets and blankets

feather bed, a traunser, sheets and blankets,

and a green coverlight," A.D. 1506 (p. 194).

According to Mr. Hussey, the word fs peculiar to Kent and is very generally used there ; but, as a matter of fact, it is not to be found, as far as I know, in any of the Kentish dictionaries, nor in the important work of Dr. Jos. Wright.

Some similar forms, with an identical sense, are quoted in the ' N.E.D.' at transom, 6 : 1463, ' Bury Wills ' (Camden), " ij peyre of good shetes, the trampsoun " ; 1479,