Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/125

 12 S. V. MAY, 1919. |

NOTES AND QUERIES.

119

marking the varying lengths of sites com- mencing originally in Great Montague Court (Rocque 1746, Strype ed. 1720), which was removed in some alterations of the frontages 'for the eastern arm of Little Britain. Several of these angles have inset stone brackets which possibly were originally carved, and, therefore, are worth preserving, but suc- cessive lime-washings have altogether hidden their original form.

The end house has peculiar oblong upper windows, and no doubt had a cornice of considerable size, as the top of the wall is now peculiarly featureless. On the left of the 'Court a timber-roofed chamber with brick floor is identified by local tradition as the moi'tuary of St. Bartholomew's Hospital.

In my earlier recollections of the Court it was occupied by some small industries, -and the residents of the large end house beautified it by window - gardening, &c. Unfortunately, in an a,ir-raid an incendiary bomb dropped in the neighbourhood brought fire and disaster to this quaint corner, and it has not since been inhabited.

ALECK ABRAHAMS.

RlPON SPURS AND OTHER GUARDED SPURS. There is a widely circulated belief that the craftsmen of Ripon in the heyday of their fame between 1610 and 1710 produced among other masterpieces spurs so made tha they revealed their rowels only when pressed against the flanks of the rider's horse. This belief was encouraged by the late Mr. T. C. Heslington, author of the ar-ticle on ' Rippon Spurs ' in Mr. William Andrews's ' Bygone Yorkshire,' quoted in ' N. & Q.' (8 S. hi. 146) ; but it proves upon inquiry to be without any foundation in fact!

The origin of this fallacy is apparently to be found in a pair of spurs formerly in Mr. Heslington's own collection. He describes them on p. 25 of his paper on ' Ancient Spurs, and their Manufacture in Ripon ' (1883), as -a " pair of silver plated spurs with spring rowel guards. . . .said to have been made by Alderman John T-arry," the last Ripon spurrier, who died in 1798. He, however, patent,' and I cannot find a Ripon spurrier of that name."
 * adds that they are " marked ' Chester's

An examination of the specifications in the Patent Office reveals no patentee of the name of Chester ; but a Thomas Cheston, plater, of Birmingham, took out a patent (no. 1549) in 1786 for an automatic spur- rowel guard, and Mr. Heslington's spurs were 210 doubt his work. Rust or faulty stamping

would easily account for Mr. Heslington's misreading of the name. The present writer is unaware of the exact construction of these spurs, as Cheston' s specification is without drawings ; but apparently the guard was of what is now termed the " sleeve " variety, and possessed an advantage over other con- temporary spring guards those of Richard Ireland Thurgood (pat. no. 1538) and Joseph Antley (pat. no. 1541), both patented in 1786 in that it might be removed at will, and the spur worn with or without it, without interfering with either the utility or artistic appearance of the spur.

There is no discoverable evidence thab there was an automatic means of protecting the rowel or other stimulus of earlier date than Thurgood' s patent, though many devices whereby the rowel could be tem- porarily "blinded," and so prevented from doing damage to the dress of the wearer when dismounted, are to be seen on spurs of the eighteenth century. This rendered them peculiarly suitable for use by ladies, but in every case the mechanism was clumsy and had to be adjusted by hand.

Devices with a similar object were in use from the fourteenth century. Some such mechanical contrivance may have distin- guished the >l esperons a femme " of fifteenth - Century inventories ; and the " long spurs " of the same period were often provided with special rowels, or, according to some writers, a guard over the rowel and neck of the spur, to prevent entanglement in the housings then in fashion. At one period clerics wore short prick-spurs to avoid damage to their gowns when mounted ; while in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the " eperon a la chartreuse " was relegated to the use of doctors, barbers, cures, and monks, on account of the ease with which it could be removed from the boot. Why barbers should be included it is difficult to see, unless the origin of this privilege is mediaeval, for the costume of barbers at this late date did not usually include a gown.

CHARLES BEARD.

" NOS HABITAT, NON TARTARA." At 11 S.

ix. 429 J. K. asked for the source of

Nos habitat, non tartara, sed nee sidera caeli,

Spiritus in nobis, qui viget, ilia facit,

which he had found at the end of the introduction to a German translation of Cornelius Agrippa's ' Occult Philosophy,' published at Stuttgart in 1855.

There can be no doubt that the writer of this introduction took the distich from a letter of Agrippa to Aurelius ab Aqua-