Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/111

 9*8. XL FEB. 7, 1908.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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rapidly and prospered. New arts were introduced and taught by the monks ; new ideas sprang up among the people ; new wants were created. Through them, moreover, intercourse began with other nations ; the ecclesiastic who journeyed to Rome took with him a goodly troop of priests, monks, and laymen. They saw strange lands and observed strange customs.

When one remembers all this, and also the fact that the people could no longer find work and pay at the monastery door, nor kindly doctoring and hospitality in time of need, and that vast numbers must have been thrown out of employment during the seven years of sacrilege and spoliation (and after, owing to speculators from town buying up the land in many neighbourhoods, and pas- turage, in the place of agriculture, becoming the order of the day in the country), one is, indeed, amazed that the whole unexampled upheaval was effected with no more revolt and disturbance than occurred ; for it was whether necessary in the cause of progress or not a moral and religious earthquake of gigantic proportions, and one that shook the whole of English country life to its founda- tions.

When M. Sabatier was in England this last time, he was describing the ascent of a moun- tain which he had recently made. In men- tioning the mist that enveloped himself and the guide, and completely blotted out the view at the summit, he added that the guide turned to him and said, "Monsieur, if you lay your ear to the ground, you will hear the tears of the whole world falling ! " Perhaps, for some of us, if we too laid our ear to the past even though it be a past of four cen- turies and a half ago we should hear some faint echoes of the heartbreaks that shivered through that seven years' upheaval of old traditions, of old associations, of the old once so familiar monasterial life, from country folk, from dependents, from artificers in rare handicrafts, and from the homeless, exiled monks, whose compulsory exodus turned them adrift on the world.

History repeats itself, and so the fate of the Benedictines and other orders in 1536 pursues to-day the Carthusian monks and many other religious orders in France. The Government having refused to authorize more than five of all the orders that have been for so many years " sons of the soil " in France, they are to be exiled, and the place where they worked so untiringly for the poor, and offered hospitality so ungrudgingly, is to know them no more.

I. GlBERNE SlEVEKING.

EXTRACTS FROM BISHOP RACKET (See 9 th S. x. 401, 423.)

SUPPLEMENTARY to the note on Bishop Racket's life of Archbishop Williams, 1693, I hope the following extracts (principally of curious words and phrases) from that bio- graphy will not be without interest. For obvious reasons the italics, as a rule, are mine. As I have already mentioned, the folio is divided into two parts, each having its own distinctive pagination, and for the sake of reference I have adhered to the same arrangement.

PART I.

" He found his young Kinsman John Williams to be the Bell-weather of the little Flock." P. 7.

"He moiled & while in Chronology." P. 13.

" Because his rarely beautified Wits, with which he had even inchanted his hearers in so many estivat commencements." P. 18.

" He had a fair Champion Country to Ride over to it."-P. 19.

" A Distinction that cuts by an even Thread." P. 25.

" Our Genethliacal Writers, perhaps, would call it Synastria." P. 29.

" But in that County, while Dean Williams was present, they did eluctate out of their Injuries with credit to themselves." P. 36.

"From a School-master that taught Petties, to a Proctor in Christian Courts." P. 37.

" But for all his Doctor-ship he was not out of the Brakes, he was but Tapisht, as Hunters call it." P. 37.

" With whom he wrought to abortive the Bill before it came to the Birth." P. 37.

"And when his Enemies laboured to cut his Comb, he got the Spurs." P. 37.

"His Lordship was of very detultorious Affec- tions." P. 40.

" To stoop this Vinacre to the very Lees." P. 59.

"In Attributing due and down-Weight to every Man's Gifts. "P. 59.

" What can be expected from Crabs but Verjuice? " -P. 59.

" 1 am yet in the lingering Season of the Parasceve, or induction preparative." P. 61.

" This Knight when he is in a Course of Malice is never out of his Way; but like an egregious Bugiard here he is quite out of the Truth." P. 71.

" Two or three Afternoons he Allotted every Week to hear Peremptories."P. 74.

" And was not this Suit come to Adidtage for Tryal after Seventeen Years Vexation in it first and last?"-P. 75.

" The Spirits usually beat with an un-even Pulse, when they stirr too much in pity to our own Rela- tions." P. 75.

" This is that Ingeny which is so much com- mended." P. 75.

" Yet one of the Bar thought to put a Trick upon his Fresh-man-ship, and trouled out a motion crammed like a Granada with obsolete Words." P. 75.

"For with a serious Face he Answer'd him in a cluster of most crabbed Notions, pick'd up out of Metaphysics and Logic, as Gategorematical, and Syncategorematical, and a deal of such drumming stuff."-P. 76.