Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/73

 12 s. vin. JAN. 15, 1921.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 57 Frederick Madden, is at the British Museum (Harl. 6603). It has never been published. For Montacute see Somerset Record Society's publications. A query addressed to the Editor of Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries (Witham Frary, Bath) would 'be sure to be answered. It is certainly high time that a " biblio- graphv of existing monastic records " was compiled. Will not Dr. Howe himself fill the gap ? If our provincial archaeological societies would undertake bibliographical work of this kind they would be fulfilling a useful purpose. What is needed to-day is not the piling up of raw material but the making accessible of what already exists unknown to students. This can only be done through the bibliographies and indices geographic ally arranged. O. G. S. CRAWFORD. Hon. Se.c., Congress of Archaeological Societies. XENSJ-NGTON GRAVEL AT VERSAILLES (12 S. viii. 30). MR. LANDFEAR LUCAS will find copious references to the Kensington gravel t>its in vol. v. of Walford's 'Old and New London,' at pp. 178 et seq. WlLLOUGHBY MAYCOCK. One of the largest of the Kensington gravel pits, was near Church Street, Ken- sington. The site is now covered by Sheffield, Vicarage, Berkley, Inverness, Brunswick and Courtland Gardens. Another is marked on Rocque's map, 1754, a little north of Kensington Palace, and in the same, the part of "Netting Hill, High Street, where it is joined by Church Street, is marked " Gravel Pits. " I have, many years ago, seen letters for the neighbourhood of Campden House, addressed " Kensington Gravel Pits." Pepvs ('Diary,' June 4, 1666) refers to "walking through the Park and seeing hundreds of people listening at the Gravel Pits " to the sound of the guns of the fleet during the sea"- fight with De Ruvter. JLewis's 'Topographical Dictionary,' 1835, states that what it calls the " village " of Kensington was "amt>lv supplied with water by the Wast Midilesex Company, who have a spacious reservoir at Kensing- ton Gravel Pits, elevated more than 120 feet above the level of the Thames." ST. S WITHIN. THE GLOMERY (12 S. viii. 29). The late A. F. Leach in 'The Schools of Medieval England,' speaking of Cambridge in 1276, says : " As between the grammar school master and the chancellor and archdeacon, the decision was that the master of glomery, as by a curious corruption of the word grammar he was called had the jurisdiction in all suits in which the glomericules (glomerelli), or grammar school boys, were defendants " (p. 157). And the accounts of the Merton College Grammar School (beginning 1277) : " show that instead of the term Magister Glomerise being, as stated by Dr. Rashdall in his ' History of Universities,' a ' wholly peculiar Cambridge institution,' it was in use at Oxford. The fact is that the word " glomery " is merely a familiar corruption of the word ' grammar,' and was in use not only at Oxford and Cambridge, but at Orleans and Salisbury and no doubt elsewhere ; the word ' glomerelli,' for small grammar boys, being found at Bury St. Edmunds " (pp. 171-2). On p. 180, Mr. Leach, speaking of four- teenth-century Oxford, says : " These superintending masters [two M.A.s yearly elected to superintend the grammar schools] correspond to the Master of Glomery at Cambridge, a term in use there as late as 1540. There being only one at Cambridge, instead of two as at Oxford, points to a less number of grammar schools and schoolmasters." A. R. BAYLEY. For a brief account of the office and function of the Master of the Glomery in Cambridge University, the following from Mr. R. S. Rait's 'Life in the Medieval University ' may be of service to R. B. : " The degrees which Oxford and Cambridge conferred in grammar did not involve residence or entitle the recipients to a vote in Convocation, but the conferment was accompanied by cere- monies which were almost parodies of the solemn proceedings of graduation or inception in a recognized Faculty, a birch, taking the place of a book, as a symbol of the power and authority entrusted to the master. A sixteenth-century Esquire Bedel of Cambridge left for the benefit of his successors details of the form for ' enteryng of a master in Gramer.' The ' Father ' of the Faculty of Grammar (at Cambridge the mys- terious individual known as the ' Master of Glomery ') brought his ' sons ' to St. Mary's Church for eight o'clock mass. ' When mass is done fyrst shall begynne the Acte in Gramer. The Father shall have hys sete made before the Stage for Physyke [one of the platforms erected in the church for doctors of the different faculties, etc.} and shall sytte alofte under the stage for Physyke. The Proctour shall say. Incepiatis. When the Father hath argyude as shall plese the Proctour, the Bedeyll in Arte shall bring the Master of Gramer to the Vyce-chancelar, delyver- yng hym a Palmer wyth a Rodde, whych the vyce-chancelar shall gyve to the seyde master
 * W. H. WHITEAR, F.R.Hist.S.