Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/432

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

was published in 1900 by the Rev. Priestley Prime, copies of which I should be happy to supply to any one interested in the matter. Jerom Murch appended a ' Sketch of the History of the Exeter Assembly of Ministers ' to his ' History of the Presbyterian and General Baptist Churches in the West of England,' London, 1835, and printed some of its documents in the body of his book. The records of this Assembly are of im- portance from the light they shed on the progressive theological development from Calvinism through Arianism to the Uni- tarian position, which marked many of the congregations of the " Old Dissent " in England and Wales.

WALTER H. BURGESS. 4 Ladysmith Road, Plymouth.

JONAS HAN WAY : UMBRELLAS (12 S. iii. 129, 238). The question asked by MR. LEONARD C. PRICE at the first reference re- lated to the followers of Jonas Hanway, said to have been the first man (that is, a person of the male sex) who carried an umbrella in the streets of London ; but some of your correspondents have dealt in their answers with the use of the um- Tarella generally, by men as well as women, in this and other countries, as a protection from the rain and sun. It appears certain from a passage in The Taller for Oct. 17, 1710, No.^238, which runs as follows,

The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty

strides, While streams run down her oiled umbrella's

sides,

that the ximbrella was in use by women in London in the early part of the eighteenth -century. Again, Gay, in his ' Trivia ; or, The Art of walking the Streets of London ' (1712), has these lines :

-Good housewives all the winter's rage despise Defended by the ridinghood's disguise ; Or underneath th' umbrella's oily shed Safe through the wet on clinking pattens tread.

A mass of information on the history of the umbrella may be found in the introduc- tion, to ' Abridgments of Specifications re- lating to Umbrellas, Parasols, and Walking Sticks, 1780-1866,' published by the Com- missioners of Patents in 1871. The volume is, I believe, still in print, and may be obtained from the Patent Office Sale Depart- ment, Quality Court, Chancery Lane, W.C.2. I may also refer to Mr. William Sangster' ' Umbrellas and their History ' (Cassell, Fetter & Galpin, about 1871). R. B. P.

[See also ST. SWITHIN'S note on 'Women and Umbrellas,' ante, p. 414.]

MAW, A GAME OF CARDS (12 S. iii. 299, 367). In ' A Collection of Seventy-Nine Black - Letter Ballads and Broadsides, arinted in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth between the Years 1559 and 1597 ' (London, Joseph Lilly, 1867), will be found, at pp. 123-5, " The Groome-Porter's Laws at Mawe, to be obserued in fulfilling the due orders of the game." This is the first English printed code of laws for any card game that we have, and contains sixteen laws, from which a rough idea of the game can be deduced, though some of them are difficult to understand nowadays. The game appears to resemble closely twenty-five, a variety of spoil-five, or, as it is called in ' The Compleat Gamester,' five-cards, which after the Restoration seems to have taken the place of ma we, which is not mentioned under its own name by Cotton. I cannot see any resemblance between the games of ma we and romestecq (not "rumstick"). The game has previously been noticed in ' N. & Q.' ; see 5 S. iii. 276 ; 7 S. i. 393 ; 9 S. x. 127 ; 10 S. x. 468 ; xi. 77.

F. JESSEL.

HAMPTON COURT INSCRIPTION (12 S. iii. 383). I think there can be little doubt that the letters R. R. F., carved on the south front of Hampton Court, stand for " Rex Regina Fecerunt." But one would be glad to know of any other suggestion, if one can be made. ERNEST LAW.

The Pavilion, Hampton Court Palace.

H. C N will, no doubt, be pleased to know that his suggestion as to the signifi- cance of the letters R. R. F. on the fa9ade at Hampton Court Palace is fully cor- roborated by MR. ERNEST LAW in his history of that palace, iii. 169.

ALAN STEWART. [MR. ARCHIBALD SPARKB also thanked for reply.]

' A RING, A RING OF ROSES ' : ENGLISH TRADITIONAL RIMES (12 S. iii. 129, 256). Versions of the traditional rime referred to as above are printed in the ' Dictionary of British Folk lore,' Part I. ' Traditional Games,' pp. 192-9, under the title of ' Hark the Robbers.' Matter relating to the rime is referred to by the editor, A. B. Gomme. The title ' A Ring, a Ring of Roses,' as given in ' N. & Q.,' is due possibly to a confusion of two popular rimes, one of which resembles the German ' Ringele, Ringele, Rosenkranz,' the other being undoubtedly the English rime ' Hark the Robbers.' It is not to be inferred from the fact that there is a similar German rime that therefore the English