Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/116

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NOTES AND QUERIES. p* s. XIL AUG. s, iocs.

Nicholas of Lynn, referred to by Chaucer in the prologue to his treatise on the astrolabe, is the same person as De Lyra, the voluminous theological writer :

" a name which once rang through the halls of learning all over Europe, during the transition of the Church from a deformed to a reformed state ; a name which furnished opportunity for more than one Latin pun. Both Roman Catholics and the early Protestants gave to that erudite and learned writer the credit of Luther's illumination. Pflug, Bishop of Naumberg, had improvised the couplet :

Si Lyra non lyrasset

Lutherus non saltasset.

A Protestant scholar played upon the name to the same tune, but with a variation, and made the couplet run thus :

Nisi Lyra lyrasset

Totus mundus delirasset."

Who was the Protestant scholar ? Dr. Margoliouth goes on to say : "I believe I am in a position to solve a biographi- cal problem which has hitherto defied those interested in such matters. I believe the cele- brated ' Israelite indeed ' was an East Anglian, a native of Lynn."

After questioning the statements of bio- graphers that De Lyra was so called from the place of his birth in Normandy, our author proceeds :

" I never could discover whether there is, or ever was, such a place as Lyra in Normandy ; but what I did discover is this, that De Lyra himself, on the title-page of one of his works, gives England as his

native country Bishop Bale, himself a native of

East Anglia, who flourished about a century after Nicolaus de Lyra, positively states that the great harbinger of the Reformation was an Anglo- Hebrew Christian."

Referring to the mention of Nicholas of Lynn, "in an old history of Norfolk," as a learned monk native of that town, Dr. Mar- goliouth says :

"That book tells me that that monk was a very learned man, a great scholar, a great divine, a great mathematician, an astronomer, and a great musi- cian ; that he was educated at Oxford, and that he belonged to the Franciscan order. Exactly the same is affirmed of Nicolaus de Lyra. If there were two such persons, then Oxford must have been the Alma Mater of remarkable twins, christened by the same name! I do not believe in the coincidence. There was only one Nicolaus at Oxford, my 'Israelite indeed,' but he was one and the same with the Nicolaus of Lynn, and by reason of his musical proclivities, his friends and admirers turned De Lynn into De Lyra."

Some interesting notes concerning Nicholas of Lynn may be found in Prof. Skeat's 4 Chaucer ' (vol. iii. p. 353). Warton describes Nicholas of Lynn as a Carmelite, but Bale is precise that he was Franciscanorumfamilice. Bale also, in the preface to * The Image of Both Churches,' among the authors he con- sulted names Nicolaus Lyranus, Germanus.

It is a pity that Dr. Margoliouth did not quote from that title-page of De Lyra the statement that he was an Englishman. Can that statement be substantiated ? Has any one given the smallest consideration to Dr. Margoliouth's theory that Nicholas de Lynn and De Lyra are identical? I do not find any notice of Dr. Margoliouth's work in the Athenceum volume for 1870.

JAMES HOOPER.

Norwich.

BYFIELD HOUSE, BARNES. The historic mansions of noblemen and rich merchants, which a few years ago adorned the neigh- bourhood of London, are now rapidly dis- appearing, their grounds are being covered with mean buildings, and our suburbs will soon be appalling in their ugliness. York House, Twickenham, has, I fear, small chance of escape ; and I notice that Sheen House, East Sheen, with about twenty acres of land, is now offered for sale. At Barnes, near the church, a less important property is vacant, by name Byfield House, which, although externally without architectural pretensions, is within old-fashioned and attractive, and has a charming garden. Let us hope that it will be taken for purposes of residence. Perhaps one of your readers will kindly con- tribute a short notice of this house, about which I can find no authentic information, though I think there was lately a paragraph in one of the newspapers connecting it with celebrities of the eighteenth century.

PHILIP NORMAN.

SALOP. Has this word, for town and county, been satisfactorily explained ? In Harper's ' The Holy head Road ' one reads, ii. 63, that " it comes, say philologists, from the ancient Erse words sa, a stream, and litb, a loop, &c." This sounds too pat to be true, and, in any case, Eng. loop is of Scand. origin. Ibid., p. 9.6, it is stated that the Earls of Shrewsbury are miscalled by that title, they being Earls of Salop (county), according to the original patent of nobility to Talbot in 1442. The author, curiously, suggests that this may have arisen from the ill savour of Fr. salope. H. P. L.

REV. ROBERT WELDON wrote a quarto pam- phlet of 162 pages, excluding preliminary matter, which was dedicated *' to the Noble Confessor, S 1 ' John Pate Baronet," and printed for Richard Royston, 1648. Its title is * The Doctrine of the Scriptures concerning the Originall of Dominion.' Weldon is described as rector of Stony Stanton, in the county of Leicester. I do not find his name in the index