Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/149

 12 s. viii. FEB. 5, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. at a distance, the Burgesses gradually took a greater and greater share in the affairs of the town, being " confronted with no very strict assertion of the manorial supremacy." When the manor passed into the hands of the Crown the Royal tenure of it led them to suppose that their position was independent of intermediate lordship as a fully chartered borough held at fee farm from the Crown. The liberties, privileges and franchises were held by the Crown simply as lord of the manor, and were alienated by purchase in 1617 to Sir Lawrence Tanfield. At the instigation of the new, grasping, and powerful lord he was Chief Baron of the Exchequer the Burgesses were put upon their defence in the Court of Exchequer by a writ of Quo Warranto within two years of Tanfieid's purchase. The Burgesses' case collapsed like a house of cards, and the position of Burford as resembling that of the great free boroughs came to an end. The answer of Oxford to the appeal of the Burgesses as to how Oxford held its similar privileges shows, as the author points out, the whole difference between the position of Oxford and that of Burford. Oxford replied that they had the rights in question " as part of that wee hould by fee farme and for which wee pay the same." The Burgesses of Burford had never paid any rent for the sources of profit which they had taken into their hands, and obviously therefore had no right U/ them. Mr. Gretton traces the history of the Corpora- tion in the period of decline which followed, when it continued in being principally by reason of its administration of certain charities. The final collapse came in 1861 when, after a period of general mal-administration of these charities, it was extinguished by a schedule of an Act of Parliament, " surely the depth of insignificance to be abolishf d by a schedule." There are one or two minor unsolved mysteries about Burford which confront us as we read these fascinating pages, small points but in- teresting to the antiquary and the student of the town. One is the fine decorated altar tomb in the south transept of the church, from which all the inscription has perished save the name " Willelmus." That the person buried there was a merchant and connected with the family of Hastings is shown from the fact that the arms include a merchant's mark and the Hastings maunch. A branch of the Daylesford family lived at Burford as is proved from the records printed by Mr. Gretton, including a grant in 1648 from George Hastings of " Dalford " to Wm. Sessions. The family of Sessions of Churchill ard Burford married into that of Hastings of Daylesford, as shown in the Heralds' Visitations, a> d possibly a study of the Hastings pedigree might reveal who was the probable occupant of this tomb. The connection of William Lenthall, the Speaker of the Long Parliament, with Burford before he bought the Priory in 1637, is another interesting point in local history. Mr. Gretton notes that it must have begun before that date, for in 1626 William his second son was baptized in Burford Church. The author in company with other writers on Burford seems to have missed the fact that William Lenthall was a nephew (? by marriage) of Lady Tanfield see her will proved hi P.C.C. in which he is made a trustee for keep- ing in repair the Tanfield tomb. His connection, therefore, with Burford and the Priory is fairly obvious. Simon Wisdom, the greatest figure hi the history of the town and corporation is not met with, says the author, in the annals at an earlier date than 1530. Mr. Gretton thinks it likely that he came of a family of substance living elsewhere. Oxfordshire wills show that the Wisdoms were established before that time both at Church Enstone and at Shipton-under- Wychwood. There is no reason to doubt that Simon was of the same family. One last point, Why did not Mr. Gretton print at least extracts from Christopher Kempster's day-book or diary which is now in the possession of a former tenant of Kempster's house at Upton Quarries ? Kemp- ster was one of the masons of St. Paul's Cathedral, as a monument in Burford Church recalls (See some interesting correspond an ce on this subject in The Times Literary Supplement in Feb. and March. 1919). The diary is of interest as showing how the stone from Upton Quarries was conveyed to London. Mr. Gretton identifies the quarries which the Kempsters owned for nearly two hundred years with a freestone quarry mentioned in a Manorial Account Roll of 1435-6, and there called Whiteladies Quarry, probably a corruption of Whiteslate which occurs elsewhere in the records. Mr. Gretton notes that a few of the local records have no traceable connection with Bur- ford at all. One of these is of interest, as every- thing concerned with the magic name of Shake- speare must be. It is an indenture of sale (1664) by Thomas Greene the elder and Thomas Greene the younger, of Packwood, co. Warwick, to Ann Shackspeare of Meriden, same county, widow, of the remainder of a lease of 99 years of a cottage in Old Fillongly, and 26 acres of land belonging, called Cotters Lands, which Thomas Greene held of Adrian Shackspere, late of Meriden, by indenture dated 1. 12. 1631 ; also assignment by the said Ann Shackspeare to Thomas Shack- speare, gentleman, her son. Adrian Shakespere witnesses by mark. How were these related to the poet's family, and how came these papers among the Burford records ? REVISED EDITION OF LIDDELL AND" SCOTT'S GREEK ENGLISH LEXICON. THE need for a revision of Liddell and Scott's Greek Lexicon has long been appreciated by the Delegates of the Press. The discovery, since the last substantial revision of the Lexicon, of the ' Constitution of Athens,' the poems of Bacchy- lides, the mimes of Herodas, and a large number of fragments of classical literature, both from the works of authors such as Hesiod, Pindar, Sappho, Alcaeus, and Callimachus, and from those of other writers who were previously little more than names to us, has added a considerable number of new words and early examples or new uses of known words. The study of the numerous non-literary papyri has immensely widened our knowledge of Hellenistic Greek, besides intro- ducing us to a new technical vocabulary in con- nexion with the administration of Ptolemaic and