Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 1.djvu/20

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NOTES AND QUEEIES.

[9 th S. L JAN. 1, '98.

at the Court of his sister Matilda, consort of Henry I. of England. But the selection of " native " families given is rather an unlucky one. The Maxwells we believe to be de- scended from Maccus, a Saxon, who fled from England at the Conquest, and settled not in Dumfriesshire, but in Roxburghshire, whence the surname is derived. The Murrays trace their descent from Freskin, a Frieslander or Fleming, who obtained lands in the east of Scotland in the twelfth century, his son William adopting the title De Moray, or De Moravia, from the province where these lands lay. The name Crichton also comes from the east country ; I do not know of any earlier than John de Creichton, who witnessed some of Robert the Bruce's charters. Of Carlyle and Carruthers, both locative or territorial names, it is impossible to trace the nation- ality of the holders who were contemporary with the first Johnstone. Carruthers is cer- tainly a place in Dumfriesshire caer Ryderch, the camp of Ryderch Hael, the Christian victor at Ardderyd ; but was the owner of it in the thirteenth century a "native" or a settler?

Of course I accept MR. JONAS'S assurance that he did not intend to say that Sauchie- burn was in Dumfriesshire, but it will be admitted that the inference is not an un- natural one from the words he used (8 th S. xii. 365). They were as follows :

" The Douglas rebellion in 1484 was not crushed before a third began. Dumfriesshire was, of course, again the chief battle-field. At the battle of Sauchie- burn James III. fled wounded, taking refuge in a cottage, where he was murdered."

James III. left the battle-field unhurt ; he fell from his horse two miles from it. MR. JONAS explains that he used the word "wound" inadvertently for "accident," but the latter term would fit awkwardly into his sentence, and the accident did not take place " at the battle." HERBERT MAXWELL.

A " BRITISH " LIFE OF ST. ALBAN (8 th S. xii. 29, 116, 230). Your correspondent A. B. G. recorded, apparently as historical, what on the face of it seemed a wonderfully incredible tale. Quoting from Hazlitt, who, again, quoted Capt. Henry Bell, the first English translator of Luther's ' Table Talk,' your correspondent told how the Emperor Rudolf II., by an awful edict, compelled everybody, on pain of death, to burn any copy he might have of Luther's conversations, and how the whole world obeyed the edict, so that soon not a single copy of the book could be found out nor heard of in any place. Only one copy, buried deep under the foundation of a wall,

survived till 1626, when Bell's friend Cas- parus von Sparr dug it out, and, afraid now of Ferdinandus II., sent it for safety to Bell in England to be translated, which was duly accomplished, the book being published in 1652, with the approval of the Assembly of Divines and the sanction of the House of Commons. Capt. Bell, writing his preface in 1650, just after the completion of the Thirty Years' War, must have had very odd notions of the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire, or must have been able to presume an extraordinary ignorance on the part of the House of Commons, if he per- suaded them to believe that any emperor (least of all the miserable Rudolf II.) could force all the Protestant princes and people of Germany to burn any of Luther's books, and could carry his point so completely that only a single copy of the ' Table Talk ' was left, for Capt. Bell's special glory and profit.

Hazlitt must surely have taken this tale at its true valuation, with its vision of an old man in white raiment, and a heavenly voice breathing warning or encouragement on the highly favoured Englishman. For although Hazlitt does not expressly discredit Bell's self-puffery, he goes on to mention the various editions of the 'Table Talk' that had appeared in Germany, specifying editions or reprints in 1566, 1567 (two), 1568, 1569, 1577, 1603, and 1621 all before the marvellous discovery by Sparr. Yet we are to believe that Sparr's copy was the only one extant from early in the reign of Rudolf (1576-1612) till 1626. And Bell makes his own story the more incredible by the (so far as I know) entirely baseless affirma- tion that the Protestant princes thought so highly of the book that they caused every parish to have a chained copy in its church.

From the learned preface (1854) to the 'Table Talk' in Irmischer's edition of Luther's ' Works \ (67 vols., 1826-57) we find that of the original German work, as edited by Aurifaber, there were editions in 1566, 1567 (twice), 1568, 1569 (twice), and 1577 ; as redacted and extended by Stang- wald, in 1571, 1591, and 1603 ; by Selneccer, in 1577 and 1591 ; besides the Latin transla- tion, transcribed in 1560. Can anybody sup- pose that all the copies of all these editions were ^destroyed, save only the one that was so miraculously preserved ? But there is specific evidence against such a preposterous supposition.

Walch, in the preface to the ' Table Talk ' in his edition of Luther (1743), cites Bell's marvellous story, says it is suspicious and unlikely to begin with, wholly rejects the