Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 6.djvu/118

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. vi. APRIL 3, 1920.

VALUE OF MONEY (12 S. vi. 36). See Hallam's ' View of the State of Europe during -the Middle Ages' (1826), vol. iii., p. 445 ff. for changes in the value of money. On p. 450 he gives the following table, which he says is taken from Sir Frederick Eden (presumably from the work entitled ' The statistics regarding prices) :
 * State of the Poor,' 1797, which abounds in

Value of pound sterling (present money).

1066 1300 1344 1346 1353 1412 1464 1527

I. 8. d.

2 18 1

2 17 5

2 12 5

2 11 8 266

1 18 9

1 11

7 6|

1543

1545 "

1546"

1551'

1552

1553

1560

1601

1. s. d. 1 3 3} 13 Hi

" The unit or present value refers to that of the shilling before the last coinage, which ^reduced it," he says, i.e., to the third issue of George III. (1798), when the proportion was .still kept at 92 - grs. to the shilling.

In this, as well as in the following section, some interesting information about prices is given : e.g., 25 eggs cost a silver penny Ibetween 1415 and 1425.

Further information, beyond that which can be obtained from the published account- foooks of convents, &c., will be found in Ruding's 'Annals of the Coinage' (1819), pp. 15-34, where valuable tables are given ; .and the fineness of all the coins of every issue can be learnt from Grueber's ' Hand- ,book of the Coins of Great Britain and Ireland' (1899). G. R. DKIVEK.

MORBUS ANGLICUS (12 S. v. 180). .According to the received account the sweating sickness was first known at the ^beginning of the reign of Henry VII. Polydore Vergil says :

" Eodem anno nouum morbi genus pervasit per totum regnum, sub primum Henrici in insulam descensum, dira quidem lues, & quam nulla sit setas antea, quod constet, perpessa : subito enirn -sudor mortifer corpus tentabat . . . . " ' Anglica historia,' lib. xxvi., p. 567, ed. 1570.

Erasmus writes with less precision in his dedication of 'Lingua' (1525): " Sudorem letiferum ante annos triginta non novit Anglia," and in a letter dated April 23, 1533, speaks of the " scelerata pestis " as being too well known to the English for over forty years past.

We should not then expect this disease to <be mentioned by the specific name of " Morbus Anglicus " more than eighty years ^before its supposed first appearance.


 * Coinage debased.

MB. FAWCETT'S query assumes that the inscription is still to be seen in the church. If so it would be as well to examine it carefully, not only to determine the date, but to set the reader's mind at rest with regard to the singular latinity that appears in the transcript.

If, however, the copy is taken from Joseph Hunter's 'History and Topography of the Deanery of Doncaster,' it should be noted that the wording of this and other inscriptions depends on a copy made from a set of notes taken by a monk of Roche. According to Hunter the originals no longer remain in the church at Hatfield. In more than one case he suspects an error in the date. It is Hunter's suggestion that the sweating sickness was intended by " morbus Anglicus." The correct title of Gideon Harvey's book, in its second edition, is ' Morbus Anglicus : Or the Anatomy of Consumptions ' (not " Con- sumption "). In the first edition it ran ' Or a Theoretick and Practical Discourse of Consumptions.' Hunter gives " Consump- tions " correctly.

It may be worth adding that from about the middle of the seventeenth century " morbus Anglicus " was applied to rickets. See Dr. Greenhill's note on the words " the disease of his country, the Rickets " in 'A Letter to a Friend,' p. 297 of the " Golden Treasury " edition of ' Religio Medici. 1 " Die englische Krankheit " still bears this meaning in German. Nor should we forget George Cheyne's work on Hypochondria, ' The English Malady.' Dr. Cheyne begins his preface : I

" The Title 1 have chosen for this Treatise, is a Reproach universally thrown on this Island by Foreigners, and all our Neighbours on the Con- tinent, by whom Nervous Distempers. Spleen, Vapours, and Lowness of Spirits, are, in Derision, called the ENGLISH MALADY."

EDWARD BENSLY. Much Hadham, Herts. [JOHN B. WAINEWBIGHT also thanked for reply.]

QUOTATION FROM HOOD (10 S. xii. 109). At the above reference DIEGO asked for the source of :

And there were crystal pools, peopled with fish. Argent and gold ; and some of Tyrian skin, Some crimson-barred.

This is taken from the beginning of stanza iv. in ' The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies,' by Thomas Hood.

As the Series Indexes of ' N. & Q.' are gradually building up a Dictionary of Quotations on an ample scale it may be worth recording, though late, the answer to DIEGO'S query. EDWARD BENSLY.