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

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'NOTES AND QUERIES.' THE honoured motto of 'N. & Q.' from its commencement has been Capt. Cuttle's famous injunction, " When found, make a note of." But just as there were brave men before Agamemnon, so were there counsellors for note - making before our venerable friend. " I will make a prief of it in my note-book," exclaimed Sir Hugh Evans in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor ' ; and many of us have taken that immortal Welsh parson as our exemplar. Yet a more precise instructor in the art to be cultivated by every reader of and contributor to ' N. & Q.' was one White- lock Bulstrode, of the Inner Temple, contro- versialist and mystical writer. There is pre- served among the manuscripts of Mr. J. Eliot Hodgkin, F.S. A., of Richmond, Surrey, a " Book of Observanda," ranging from 8 April, 1687, to 25 June, 1692, written by this Prothonotary of the Marshalsea Court and Commissioner of Excise, author also of ' A Discourse of Natural Philosophy,' published in the last- given year. And the purpose of this " Book of Observanda" was thus indicated in an entry upon an opening leaf :

" Sept. 1687 : Observanda. In the World what I meet with, extraordinary or usefull, I committ to

writing, that on Refleccion I may be able to given some accompt of men and things. In reading I should observe (but my broken minutes will not permitt itt) this method. First to common-place in a generall booke, under proper Heads, what I find remarkeable ; 2dly, sett down what I finde new, and fitt to be remembred, which one should review at the end of the weeke, and then more exactly digest it ; 3dly, to sett downe in another little booke queries that I know not, in order to be informed, when I meete with men capable."

It is regrettable to learn, upon the authority of Mr. John Cordy Jeaffreson, who edited the Hodgkin MSS., that this intention to make a private collection in anticipation of our own ' N. & Q.' was not carried out, for 1 ' after working for a time on the common-place

operations, so that the book is far from corre- sponding to the programme."

Mr. Leslie Stephen has characterized the Athenian Mercury, established in London in 1690, as "a kind of Notes and Queries" an honour which, quaint and interesting as was that periodical, it scarcely deserves ; but Bul- strode's idea was so close an anticipation of the weekly journal which is a friend to so many of us to-day that it deserves here and now to be recognized. ALFRED F. BOBBINS.

THE GATES OF LONDON. (See 8 th S. xii. 161, 48)

IT is riot quite easy to tell from the note at the latter reference whether the writer believes that St. Giles's Church was founded on its present site because it was close to a gathering - place for cripples, or whether cripples took up their station at Cripplegate because of its proximity to the church of their tutelary saint. According to Stow, "Alfune builded the parish Church of S. Giles, nigh a gate of the Citie, called Porta contractorum, or Criplesgate, about the yeare 1090 " (' Survey,' ed. 1603, p. 34). This gate was certainly in existence a hundred years previously.

Very little is known of London before the Conquest; but there is scarcely any doubt that the walls followed the line of the present City limits. The massive character of those walls is known from the few relics which are still in existence. They were pierced on the landward side by at least four gates, which in modern times were known as Aldgate, Cripplegate, Aldersgate, and Newgate. In those days commerce and the Church shared the city between them. The little stream of Walbrook, which was navigable as far as the Cheap, or great market-place of the city,