Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/179

 9 s. xii. A. 29,

NOTES AND QUERIES.

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association, for the sake of topographica distinction, of a secular name, whether o; person, place, or thing, with the name of the patronal saint to whose memory the church is dedicated. I say memory, because a church is not, accurately speaking, dedicated to any individual saint, but to God, the purpose being to perpetuate thus among the living the memory of the saintly dead (see on this point Bingham's ' Works,' 1855, vol. iii.) Similarly, I think, both St. Margaret Pattens and St. Michael le Quern obtained their suffixal designation, in the first instance from the trade sign of the '* Three Pattens," anc in the other, not primarily from its being situated in an old corn market, but from its contiguity to a miller's in that corn market.

The church of St. Margaret Pattens was undoubtedly so named to distinguish it from St. Margaret's, Lothbury, St. Margaret Moyses, or from St. Margaret's, New Fish Street, and probably existed before the trade in the patten had attained considerable dimensions, for the parish of St. Margaret atte Pattyns occurs in 1322 (Letter-Book E, 157), and the first rector named was inducted in 1324 (see Hennessy's 'NovumRepertorium, 1898, and Newcourt's 'RepertoriumEcclesias- ticum,' vol. i. p. 407), whereas the earliest mention of pattens appears to be in the year 1400, when they were made by the pouch- makers, who obtained from the Court of Aldermen the supervision of goloshes of wood, which they showed to the court that they had invented and established. These were apparently clogs or pattens with leather straps, to lift the wearer above the kennels of the City. The patten makers, however, although not incorporated until 1670, existed as a distinct fellowship in 1419, and I think it highly probable that the title of St. Mar- garet Pattens was derived from the sign of the pattenmaker who was the first to set up, under the shadow of the church, a business which became quite distinct from that of the pouchmakers, and around which other pattenmakers clustered, thus making it the distinctive pattenmakers' quarter of London, as St. Martin's-le-Grand was the particular quarter of the shoemakers. There was a sign of the " Patten over against Suffolk Street," between the Haymaket and Charing Cross, so late as 1718 (see Postboy, 15-18 August, 1713, and the Weekly Journal, 1 February, 1718). This was a toyshop. And there are at least two tokens extant, one of the "Three Pattens," near Strand Bridge, and the other of the " Patten " in Whitechapel (' Beaufoy Tokens,' Nos. 1094 and 1281). The arms of the Pattenmakers

are Gules, on a chevron argent, between three pattens or, tied of the second, the ties lined azure, two cutting knives conjoined sable. Crest, a patten, as in the arms.

The pro-Reformation church of St. Michael le Quern had, according to Stow, an alter- native suffixal title of "Ad Bladum, or at the Corne." " Ad Bladum " certainly occurs as the church's designation in the 'Rotuli Hundredorum' (3 Ed. I.), "and it is said that the royal way was bounded by a public cemetery (churchyard) attached to St. Michael ad bladum, by the rector " (vol. i. p. 404). But if we trace this application of the words " ad bladum" closely, it will be found, I think, to be but a corrupt rendering of " le Corne," which itself appears to be a corruption of " le Quern," and neither "corne" nor " quern " can be translated " corn-market," as Stow has it. So that, in whatever way the mediaeval Latin "ad bladum" may be interpreted, the word " quern " can mean nothing else than what it always has meant, a hand-mill. There certainly never was a sign of the "Corn-blade," but I think it quite possible that there was at a remote period in the history of the church a sign of the "Quern." Similar instances of such a sign occur. The " Boulting Mill" was the sign of Abraham Bartlett in Thames Street, Queen- hithe, in 1678 (see inscription in the City Museum), and the " Mill 1 wheel " was the sign of William Rushley, miller in Red riff, or Rotherhithe ('Beaufoy Tokens,' No. 951). Querns are frequently mentioned as if being in use up to the seventeenth century. There are many in the City Museum, but I do not think that they are all rightly assumed to be necessarily Roman. Mills (presumably wind, water, or cattle mills) were so frequently the property of the monks that in the fourteenth century their monopoly of them was felt to be a serious inconvenience, and hand-mills or querns) were brought into use for domestic purposes. During the popular insurrections which occurred in this century the insurgents did not forget to stipulate for the privilege of using hand-mills ('Rebelliones Villanorum Temporibus Ricardi,' MS. Cotton, in Brit. Mus. Claud. E. IV., cited in Hudson Turner's Domestic Arch.,' 1853, p. 149). Other late allusions to the quern occur in Harrison's Descr. of England,' 1876. p. 100; 'Mid- summer Night's Dream,' II. i. ; Browne's Pastorals,' bk. ii. song 1 ; Du Bartas's Weeks,' Week 1, Day 6, &c.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

Miss CHARLOTTE WALPOLE (9 th S. xii. 128, 51). Your Swiss correspondent must be