Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/301

. xii. OCT. 10, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

293

postal letter-card or of a stamped envelope l%d. Sub-post-office people, therefore, are expected both to give and to receive farthings the latter, at any rate, for I believe another regulation lays down that postmasters are not required to give change. Still, as the price of certain commodities sold at post offices is measured in farthings, one is at a loss to understand the reason for this refusal of an extremely humble, but perfectly legal tender. F. A. RUSSELL.

49, Holbeach Road, S.E.

[Bakers, we are told, often take farthings in dis" tricts in which they are refused by other trades" men.]

DONHEAD ST. MARY (9 th S. xii. 205). Entries in the * Composition Books ' at the Public Eecord Office show that William Mosley, clerk, compounded for the first fruits of Donhead St. Andrew rectory on 26 May, 6 Eliz. (1564), and that Nicholas Roger alias Rogers, clerk, compounded for the first fruits of Donhead St. Mary rectory on 7 March, 8 Eliz. (1565/6). I have searched the ' Index ' to these books in vain for any entry showing that Roger Bolbelt was rector of Donhead St. Andrew or John Fessard rector of Don- head St. Mary ; but by the statute 2 & 3 Ph. & M., c. 4 (1555), the payment of the first fruits of spiritual livings to the Crown ceased until that statute was repealed by 1 Eliz., c. 4, and both Bolbelt and Fessard may have been appointed such rectors between 1555 and 1558.

According to the ' Index,' Thomas Norman compounded in respect of Donhead St. Mary rectory on 4 May, 37 Henry VIII. (1546). John Fessard compounded in respect of Tisbury Vicarage on 6 March, 35 Henry VIII. (1543/4), and Richard Cassraore in respect of a chantry at Tisbury on 20 August, 1 Edward VI. (1547). H. C.

" CATHERINE WHEEL " INN (9 th S. xii. 188). Mr. H. Hurst, in 'Oxford Topography' (Oxf. Hist. Soc., 1899), p. 109, says :

"Where Canditch (now Broad Street) and St. Giles' Street meet there was a tenement thus referred to in Savage's 'Balliofergus' (p. 61): 'The corner Tenement, over-against Candych, was given (1377 to Balliol), but when or how the Tenement adjoin- ing to it, which is now the South-part of the Kathe- rine-Wheel, came to be the Colledges, I doe not find; the said Tenement seemed to have belonged to St. Fridisweds (now Ch: Ch:), as being formerly described in the Deed to be directly opposite to the East-end of Magdalen Church.' "

Anthony W9od's 'City of Oxford' (1889 edition), vol. i. p. 360 note, has :

" Cardinal's Hat or New Inn are Csesar's lodgings (viz., a site now occupied by south end of new block

of buildings belonging to Balliol opposite Martyrs' Memorial) and houses to new back gate of Trinity College (now entrance to the Millard Laboratory).

And a marginal note adds : "Note that the Catherine Wheele was as it seems called the Cardinall Hat." A. R. BAYLEY.

MARAT IN LONDON (9 th S. xii. 7, 109, 175, 235). The question of Marat's guilt as the Oxford Museum thief in January, 1776, can- not be settled by mere assertion on one side or the other. Assertion may satisfy some, but careful reasoners will accept nothing here, short of proof. MR. ROBERTS talks of "the traditional falsehoods respecting Marat," of "facts long exploded," &c., adding, "I did

my best to kill all these absurd legends a

few years ago "; but he forgets where he did so. I now remind him that it was in the Gentleman's Magazine for May, 1900. His memory is bad, and his " best " is no better. That brief article is only a faint echo of what Mr. Morse Stephens wrote in the Academy in December, 1882, and repeated more fully, and as feebly, in the Pall Mall Magazine for October, 1896. To return to MR. ROBERTS now : he asserts much, but reasons little and loosely. Obviously he is still in the dark. Where such patent clerical errors as "Bey" for Rey Rousseau's publisher at Amsterdam, whom Marat sought out for that reason and " 1786 " for 1776, the year of the theft with which Marat is charged, are uncorrected by MR. ROBERTS, close scrutiny reveals far more serious errors. Misstatements and ill- founded conclusions bristle in his article, as will appear, I am told, in a leading magazine before Christmas, which MR. ROBERTS and his confreres of the Marat cult will be able to see. But is it necessary to repeat that sus- picion based upon strong evidence cannot be dispelled by mere assertion based only upon empty conjecture? MR. ROBERTS has a seemingly strong case, though he does not improve it. But there is an equally strong one to answer, and neither he nor Mr. Morse Stephens, nor any one else, has answered it yet. Marat used an alias when it suited him. What was to prevent Dr. Marat, M.D., of St. Andrews and Soho in January, 1776, from going down to Oxford as Le Maitre, a teacher of French, later in that very month, robbing the Ashmolean Museum, escaping to Dublin, being caught, brought back to Ox- ford, convicted, and sent to the Woolwich hulks as Le Maitre in March, 1777, again escaping for Marat was as slippery as an eel and reappearing in June as the learned "Dr. Marat" in Paris, having dropped his alias with his hulks attire? Nothing but the vigilance of warders, who were not