Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/147

 os.x. AUG. 16,1908.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

139

all. Large as it is, the book may be regarded as a continuation of a previous work, which we have not seen, devoted to the family of the author, long, closely, and honourably connected with the place. Those interested in the family who do not possess the history by Prof. Copinger need only turn to the latest edition of Burke s ' Landed Gentry,' wherein they will find dedicated to Copinger of Buxhall close upon two columns. With the family, which claims, among other members, more than one dis- tinguished bibliophile, French or English, we are not allowed now to concern ourselves. Very far are we from condemning the length at which the parish has been treated, since we hold that in time most villages and hamlets will have their independent histories, and the more parish records that are put beyond the reach of destruction the better. The treatment is, at least, exemplary in fulness, and there can be few sceneV or objects of importance in Buxhall of which views are not given. Buxhall is called in Domesday Book Bukessalla- buressalla=the bower of health and the hall of flagons, a striking testimony to the salubrity of situation and the hospitality of its owner. It is a scattered village in the hundred of Stow and the diocese of Norwich. Its soil being a strong or clayey loam, which is rather persistently misnamed clay, it has little geological interest. In matters of antiquity it boasts the customary dovecote, mill, pound, and stocks, though the pillory and tumbrel the latter a species of ducking-stool for scolds, which it should have had, since the lord of the manor had the franchise of view of frankpledge are not to be traced. We find in the time of Elizabeth and James more than one rector presented for playing bowls on the green. This must have been done in view of the statutes for the encouragement of archery. For the Dane- gelt Buxhall was rated at 25rf., equal to about 67. 5s. of modern money. The amount seems to have been readily paid, Buxhall, with a river then navigable to vessels of light draught, being open to incursions from the Danish rovers. In the ' 1 eet of Fines' the name of Copeuger occurs so early as 7 Richard II. The vill of Buxhall was a tithing in itself, the tithing- man being called the headborough. Its manorial court had the right to execute the law of frankpledge, and, beside other privileges, to hold twice a year a court leet. Among the fines exacted 14 April, 27 Eliz., for trivial offences was iijs. iiiyl. for not using caps on Sundays and feast days. The inhabitants and parishioners within the precincts of the leet were also "in mercy iij d for not providing and having a sufficient snare called ' A Rooke Nett.' " For not shooting with bows and arrows the parishioners were fined vj,s. viijrf. among them all, the penalty having been much reduced. The Court Rolls are intact from the reign of Henry VIII. to to-day, and courts baron have been regularly held. In the time of Edward the Confessor the manor belonged (1050) to Leswin Croc, who also had the advowson of the church. The first Norman lord was Roger Pictaviensis (Roger of Poictou), third son of Roger de Montgomery, Earl of Shrewsbury, by Mabel his wife, daughter and heiress of William Talvace. Through three successive descents the manor came, in 1412, by marriage into the hands of John Copin- ger, of Buxhall, Esq. His family had long lived in Buxhall, and exercised such hospitality that to " live like the Copingers" became a common phrase in Suffolk. The manor was in the hands of the Copin-

gers until the close of the seventeenth century, and in 1899 the Buxhall estates, including the manor, came into the possession of Walter Arthur Copinger, the forty-fifth lord of the manor, and the author of the present work. For a period of close on a thousand years, or from the time of Edward the Confessor to Edward VII., there has been no break in the con- tinuity of the lords of Buxhall. The parish registers from 6 January, 1558, to 1699 so far as they are decipherable, some injuries having been experienced are printed. The illustrations are numerous and serviceable, and the book is entitled to a high place among works of topographical, antiquarian, and genealogical interest.

The Saga Book of the Viking Club. Vol. III. Part I. THE first part of the third volume of the Saga Club, issued under the care of the Saga Master, F. T. Norris, supplies the title-pages, indexes, and other prefatory matter to vols. i. and ii., reports of meetings in 1901 and those of the district secre- taries, and three separate and important papers. The first of these consists of ' Traces of their [Viking] Folk-lore in Marshland,' a very interest- ing selection of folk-lore, superstitions, and beliefs many of them familiar enough, but others less well known collected in that particular area which, judging from place-names, must at one time " have been the most exclusively Norse portion of Lincolnshire, if not of all England." This contri- bution, which is most brightly written, will be of keen interest to all folk-lorists. More ambitious is Dr. W. Dreyer's 'Features of the. Advance of the Study of Danish Archaeology,' which imparts much curious information conc^jning the results of recent explorations. The third consists of an essay by Mrs. Clara Jerrold on ' The Balder' Myth and some English Poets.' The Viking Club is doing good service, and its work may be commended to the attention of those of our readers who are not already familiar with it. Particulars may be ob- tained of the librarian, A. W. Johnston, 36, Mar- garetta Terrace, Chelsea, S.W.

A Glossary of the. Works of William Shakespeare. By the Rev. Alexander Dyce. Revised by Harold Littledale, M.A. (Sonnenschein & Co.) DYCE'S glossary, forming a volume of his edition of Shakespeare, has long been held in high estimation by scholars. Since 1874 it has been in some respects superseded by the 'Shakespeare-Lexicon' pi Dr. Alexander Schmidt, the assistance of which no careful student would willingly forego. The last-named work -has, however, long been difficult of access, and is now, virtually, not to be pur- chased. Bartlett's ' Concordance,' to which in his preface the reviser draws attention, is an admirably serviceable book, but cumbrous in shape, and is, after all, a concordance, not a glossary. It is, accordingly, a happy idea of Prof. Littledale to revise and amplify the glossary of Dyce and facili- tate the employment of its pages. Dyce edited " on his own hand," and his references are to the volume and page of his own excellent edition of Shake- speare. In the case of those employing other editions the task of research is necessarily diffi- cult and laborious. Dr. Littledale's first task has been to alter every one of Dyce's references, and to incorporate into the text matters of glossarial value which had been left in the foot-notes. The

Siotations haye then been made to conform to the lobe text, as is done in the compilations of Schmidt