Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/521

 9* S. XI. JUNE 27, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Rome. But as he was a man of a gentle disposition and regarded the shedding of blood with aversion, he "fit connaitre, par ses discours, qu'il jugeait avec horreur les auteurs de ce cruel massacre."

T. P. ARMSTRONG.

MONA (9 th S. xi. 48, 194, 297). MR. W. R PRIOR says at the last reference that " there is no island of the name of Monain Denmark, the nearest approach to the name being the

island of Moen south-east of Seeland." In

Brookes's ' Gazetteer,' however, revised and corrected by A. G. Findlay, F.R.G.S., we are told that Mona is an island of Denmark, in the Baltic, to the south-west of the island of Zealand, from which it is separated by a narrow channel, and of which Stege is the chief town (ed. 1857).

J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL.

CHURCH BRIEFS (9 th S. xi. 86, 289). See to Department of MSS., British Museum,' which refers to all the briefs at present in the collection. ANDREW OLIVER.
 * Catalogue of Charters and Rolls belonging

HERALDIC SHIELDS : THEIR ORIGIN (9 th S- xi. 8). I do not think that writers on heraldry see in the use of the heraldic shield any origin from or suggestion of any ancient method of worship such as that of the sacred tree, which MR. CALLAWAY derives from the scenes represented on one of the Assyrian cylinders to which he alludes.

I think that they are generally content with the view put before them by Boutell in his 'Heraldry, Historical and Popular,' ed. 1864, p. 13 :

"The shield, the most important piece of their defensive armour, was derived by the knights of the Middle Ages from remote antiquity, and at almost all times it has been decorated with some device or figure. The ancient Greek tragedian ^Eschylus (about B.C. 600) describes with minute exactness the devices that were borne by six of the seven chiefs who, before the Trojan war, besieged Thebes. The seventh shield is specially noted to have been uncharged. In the Middle Ages, in Europe, there prevailed a precisely similar usage ; and, indeed, so universal was the practice of placing heraldic insignia upon shields, that the shield has been retained in modern heraldry as being insepar- able from all heraldry, so that it still continues to be the figure upon which the heraldic insignia of our own times are habitually charged."

The only time that the possibility of any such suggestion as that now raised by your correspondent has occurred to me and that in a very nebulous kind of way was when I was reading a very interesting article in the last December number of the Nineteenth Century on 'The Woman- Headed Serpent in Art,' by Alice Kemp-Welch, where the

writer deals with the two types of the sacred tree, in one of which it is represented as between two animals, or between two human or semi-human beings, as shown in a Chal- dsean cylinder, which might well do duty as " supporters " !

MR. CALLAWAY raises an interesting ques- tion-. AT7 J. S. UDAL, F.S.A.

Antigua, W.I.

WYKES PEDIGREE IN COLBY'S * VISITATIONS ' (9 th S. xi. 465). In one particular Mr. Colby was certainly wrong in his reading of Harl. 5185. No such family as " Pridieulx of Row- borough " ever existed. William Wyke, of North Wyke, married Jane, daughter of William Prideaux, of Adeston and Langford, by his third wife, Alice, daughter and heiress of Stephen Gifford, of Theuborough. By this marriage Theuborough came into the Prideaux family. William Wyke and Jane Prideaux had a son, Thomas Wyke, who is mentioned in the will of his first cousin, Richard Prideaux, of Tormerton, co. Gloucester, who died s.p. in 1541. From Humphrey Prideaux, of Theu- borough, the elder brother of Richard, the family of Prideaux of Prideaux Place, Pad- stow, is descended. W. F. PRIDEAUX.

"W RLI> WITHOUT END" (9 th S. xi. 448). This is a very old phrase, meaning " for ever and ever." It occurs at least as early as the thirteenth century. Thus in 1. 109 of 'The Life of St. Swithin' the saint heals a sick man, and tells him that he shall be "hoi ^whole] and sound ivordle withouten ende." The A.-S. phrase was "on worulda world," an exact translation of the Latin in secula seculorum. WALTER W. SKEAT.

In an old Bible in my possession, "Imprinted at London by the Deputies of Christopher Barker, Printer to the Queen's most excellent Majesty, 1599," the text of Isaiah xlv. 17 is,

Ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end." The expression is not used in Ephesians. M. N.

I am rather at a loss to understand MR. BUTLER'S difficulty as to where Shake- peare found this phrase. He must have been accustomed to hearing it at least weekly in /ears before the poet's birth, appeared the irst Prayer Book of Edward VI., in which he words occur, forming, as they do now, he conclusion of the Gloria. They were -epeated in the second Prayer Book (1552), ind in all subsequent editions down to our )wn time.
 * hurch all his life, for in the year 1549, fifteen

In a 'Prymer' written in English about 400 (Littlehales) several phrases occur