Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 11.djvu/79

 9*8. XI. JAN. 24, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

71

The Court of the Chancellor of the University of Oxford, whose records commence in 1434 and are preserved at Oxford ; or in the Consistory Court of the Bishop of Oxforc (1544) ; or in the Court of the Archdeacon o:~ Oxford (1543) ; or in the Prerogative Couri of the Archbishop of Canterbury (1383). The documents of the last three courts are kepi at the Principal Registry, Somerset House London. The above information is gleanec from Dr. Marshall's 'Ancient Courts o Probate' (Horace Cox, 1895), which is the latest authority on these matters.

E. A. FEY. Birmingham.

" TRANSCENDANT " (9 th S. x. 428; xi. 15). A lapse from virtue on the part of my pen is, I suspect, responsible for a slight error at the latter reference. "Subservient" compares with "sergeant" rather than with "servant.''

J. DORMER.

" HALF -BULL " = HALF-CROWN (9 th S. x. 448). The best authority for slang names of coins is Farmer's 'Slang and its Analogues.' In my copy (No. 541) of the first volume, pub- lished 1890, I find "bull," a crown, traced back to 1812. It is a contraction for "bull's eye," which Farmer traces back in this sense to 1690. Compare the Flemish slang name for a five-franc piece, paard-oog or peerd-oog (horse's eye). JAS. PLATT, Jun.

" Bull's eye " was a cant name for a crown from the close of the seventeenth century onwards. The "half-bull" (otherwise called a " George") is an obvious derivative of this.

J. DORMER.

The v Slang Dictionary ' explains that the expression " to work the bulls " meant to get rid of false crown pieces, formerly called "bull's eyes." "Half a bull" was therefore equivalent to two shillings and sixpence, a common slang term about the year 1852, when ' Bleak House' was written. "

EVERARD HOME GOLEM AN.

71, Brecknock Road.

THOMAS ARCHER, ARCHITECT (9 th S. x. 468). Thomas Archer, groom -porter to Queen Anne, George I., and George II., and archi- tect of St. John the Evangelist's Church, Westminster, was the son of Thomas Archer, M.P. for Warwick temp. Charles II. He was, it is believed, a pupil of Vanbrugh.

The memoir of him in the ' Dictionary of Architecture' (A. P. Soc.), by the late George Burnell, does not give the date of his birth, but gives the date of his death as 23 May [?], 1743, from the Gentleman 's Magazine. Mr. Ernest Kadford, in the ' D.N.B.,' says the

date of his birth is unknown, and adds the information, without indicating its source, that Archer left a fortune of 100,000^., which he bequeathed to his youngest nephew, Henry Archer, M.P. for Warwick, who mar- ried the Lady Elizabeth Montagu, sister of George, Earl of Halifax, and died 1768.

Archer was uncle of the first Lord Archer, the son of his brother Andrew, whose title, created in 1747, became extinct in 1778.

The Archers of TJmberslade, co. Warwick, are an old and distinguished family, one line being said to be descended from Fulbert 1'Archer, a Norman baron, a now living descendant being Graves- Chauncey Archer, Mount John, co. Limerick.

According to Burke's ' Landed Gentry,' the Archers of Umberslade are connected with the family of Chaplin, co. Lincoln. John Chaplin, of Blankney, co Lincoln, had issue :

1. Anne, married Thomas Archer (son of Thomas Archer, of Umberslade). ob. s.p. 1743; vide monument at Hale, near Salisbury.

2. Francis, ob. 1720.

3. John, ob. in West Indies.

4. Thomas, married Diana, youngest daugh- ter of Andrew Archer and sister of the first Lord Archer.

5. Porter, married (?) and had issue (1)

Elizabeth, married Edward Ayscough ; (2) (Sir) John ; (3) Anne ; (4) Frances, married Charles Fitzwilliam.

A correspondent of the Herald and Genea- logist (ii. 526) observes :

'It is also remarkable that in the face of this pedigree [in Thoresby's 'History of Leeds'] there should be recorded on a handsome monument at Hale, near Salisbury, the fact that Thomas Archer, ?room -porter to Queen Anne and grandson of Sir Jimon Archer of Umberslade, had for his first wife ' Eleanor, only daughter and heiress of John Archer of Welford,' who died in childbed."

If the inscription on the monument at Hale, near Salisbury, can be found it would pro- bably give the information required.

JOHN HEBB.

Of Thomas Archer little appears to be mown beyond the contemptuous notice of lira by Horace Walpole in his ' Anecdotes of Painting in England.' "There was," says Walpole,

' a Mr. Archer, the groom-porter, who built Hethrop and a temple at Wrest, St. Philip's Church at Birmingham, Cliefden House, and a house at Roe- lampton (which as a specimen of his wretched aste may be seen in the ' Vitruvius Britannicus '), with other works of the same person, but the chef- Voeuvre of his absurdity was the church of St. John \'ith four belfrys in Westminster."

There is an obituary notice of him in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1743, according to