Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/266

 258

NOTES AND QUERIES. to* s. x. SEPT. 27, 1902.

exaggeration." In the days of my youth I gave some credit to " Ingoldsby," who wrote of the " gorgeous Abbey " :

In the place.

They say, there s not space To bury what wet nurses call " a Babby," Even " Rare Ben Jonson," that famous wight, I am told, is interr'd there bolt upright.

' The Cynotaph.'

And I have ever felt surprise that, after long years, celebrities continue to find six feet of earth unoccupied.

If I mistake not, William Spottiswoode was admitted to the choice company as a man of science, and not as Queen's printer.

ST. SWITHIN.

"ENGLAND'S DARLING" (9 lh S. ix. 290, 412, 454). Apart from the question as to who has the best right to this name, the following passage from Burton's 'Anatomy of Melan- choly ' may be of interest :

" Of such account were Cato, Fabricius, Aristides, Antoninus, Probus, for their eminent worth : so CcKsar, Trajan, Alexander, admired for valour, Hephcestio loved Alexander, but Parmenio the King: Titus, deficits humani generis, and which Aurelius Victor hath of Vespasian, the dilling of his time, as Edgar 'Etheling was in England, for his excellent virtues." Partition iii. sect. i. member ii. subs. iii.

Burton's marginal note is " Edgar Etheling, England's Darling."

Probably the reference to Freeman's ' His- tory of the Norman Conquest of England ' will already have been supplied. In case it should not, I add it vol. iv. p. 823 (second edition), where Freeman quotes from the life of Abbot Frith ric, by Matthew Paris, in the 'Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani : (edited by H. T. Riley in the Rolls Series, vol. i. p. 47) : '' Unde in Angliam tale exiit eulogium, 'Eadgar Ethelyng Engelondes der- lyng.'" Frithric's life, says Freeman, seems mythical in all its details.

EDWARD BENSLY.

The University, Adelaide, South Australia.

OLD SONGS (9 th S. ix. 388, 492 ; x. 38, 111) Did not "Tom Brown" sing 'The Lin- colnshire Poacher,' designated as such, at Rugby, either at the school sing-song or when caught up the tree by " velveteens " ? " E. M. S.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c. Records of the Borough of Leicester. Edited b

Mary Bateson. Vols. I. and II. (Cambridge"

University Press.)

To the boroughs which are reprinting extracts fron their corporation records must be added Leicester i he Leicester charters the earliest of which

ranted by Robert, Count of Meulan, confirms to ds merchants of Leicester all the customs by which hey held in the time of King William (the Con- lueror) and King William his son are, for various easons, of exceptional in terest. They have, it is sat is- actory to find, been treated with thoroughness and are which are also exceptional. Miss Mary Bateson, Associate and Lecturer of Newnham College, Cam- bridge, is editor-in-chief, and has been assisted in he task of revision by Mr. W. H. Stevenson, whose lame is happily familiar in our columns, and by the Archdeacon of Leicester, the first volume being ishered in by some interesting comments by the late Jishop of London on the utility of works of the ?lass to students of municipal institutions and their nterest to the inhabitants generally and the local antiquary in particular. In the columns of ' N. & Q.' the importance of the preservation of corporation records has been maintained with such diligence 'urther upon it. We have only to congratulate the authorities upon the manner in which their public- spirited act has been carried out and upon their dis- creet selection of writers and editors. Vol. i. saw the light last year, and covered the space from 1103 to 1327; vol. ii. carries them forward to 1509, or virtually to the accession of Henry VIII. In her introduction Miss Bateson points out the abnor- malities a hateful word, the use of which nothing Dut necessity can justify which render the early his- tory of Leicester specially interesting or important. At an early date it was, with Lincoln, Nottingham, Stamford, and Derby, one of the Danish burhs, and shared with them a peculiar organization. With Chester, Lancaster, and Warwick, its castle was in the hands of an earl, who was lord also of the borough. Not until the middle of the fourteenth century was any attempt made to obtain the Firnia Burgi, the right to farm the town revenues in return for a fixed composition, which, as Miss Bate- son says, is " the commonest privilege of a free borough." Another "abnormality" much to be deplored is the almost total loss of the records of the Borough Court, often the most interesting and instructive of documents. Compensation for this may be found in the fact that the Merchant Gild Rolls are carefully preserved a subject for con- gratulation, seeing that the Leicester Merchant Gild was exceptionally strong, and seems to have had financial control, generally vested in a corporation or a town council. The century pre- ceding the Norman Conquest did much to shape its history. "After its absorption into the English kingdom on the fall of the Danish power, it became a normal English shire-stow or county town of the Mid- land pattern a ' burh ' which the shire was bound to maintain, within whose walls men were protected by a special peace." So interesting is the civic his- tory of Leicester that there is no point of more importance than another. It must be read at length in Miss Batesou's introduction. Much of the matter is necessarily common to the history of most great towns, but it may be studied here to great advantage. Especially to be commended are the indexes and the appendixes generally. In the second volume there are thus an index of rare words, a second of names of streets and fields, and a third of names and places, together with a subject-index to each of the two volumes.
 * ,hat there is neither temptation nor need to insist

Among prohibited games we find " pykkyng with arowes, which Strutt supposes to be blowing of arrows through a tube at certain numbers by way