Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/498

 490

NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. XIL DEC. 19, 1903.

the skilful bowman was after Richard's death flayed alive by Merchadeus. For Oriental instances see Grote's 'History of Greece,' vol. iv. Notes. J. HOLDEN MACMICHAEL.

This horrible subject has on two occasions appeared in the columns of 'N. & Q.' See 1 st S. i. 185 ; 7 th S. ix. 285.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

HISTORY OF BOOKSELLING (9 th S. xii. 267, 316, 395). Mr. Nicholas Triibner's MS. in German on the * Book Trade of the Ancients' was in my hands in the summer of 1873, and is mentioned in one of his letters, now on my table, dated 2 August of that year. He believed that his information as to the facts was accurate, and in part new, and that he had covered the whole ground ; but he had doubts as to the putting together of the matter. I thought his modesty excessive, and that the book was satisfactory both in matter and form. WILLIAM E. A. AXON.

Manchester.

COURTS OF REQUESTS, WARDS, AND AUGMEN- TATIONS (9 th S. xii. 309). Lists of judges in the Court of Requests, with notes thereon, are to be found in the 'Selden Society's Publications,' vol. xii. pp. cii-cxxiv (London, Bernard Quaritch, 1898). It appears from Ley's Reports that the two Chief Justices and the Chief Baron for the time being were ex ojficio the judges assistants to the Court of Wards, and that they usually all sat together, though two were a quorum.

JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT.

For the officials of the Augmentation Office see p. 7 of 'Abbeys around London.' Perhaps Mr. Scargill-Bird's 'Guide to the Principal Classes of Documents preserved in the Public Record Office ' will contain the answer to the rest of this question. Not having the book by me at the moment, I cannot say for certain. JOHN A. RANDOLPH.

ENVELOPES (9 th S. xii. 245, 397, 434). The first mention of envelopes occurs, I believe, in 1653, when M. de Valayer set up, under royal patronage, a private penny post in Paris boxes being placed at street corners for the reception of letters wrapped in post-paid envelopes. It was a strictly aristocratic privilege, soon died out, and was forgotten even in France, to be rediscovered in Parisian postal archives by M. Piron, the French postal reformer of my father's time. Thus do old inventions get reinvented, for when Charles Knight, the eminent publisher, during his long crusade against the bad old

"taxes on knowledge," proposed stamped covers for newspapers in 1834, he had never- heard of M. de Valayer's short-lived scheme.

When Rowland Hill went, in 1839, to inspect the French postal system, he found it far in advance of our own, the charges being about two-thirds of ours, and the revenue steadily increasing, instead of being nearly stationary, as was ours. The postage on letters was not reckoned, as with us, by the number of enclosures, but by weight, though the charges, like our own, were complicated by further rating according to distance. Envelopes, therefore, might easily have been used in France, though I remember none before 1848, the year when our postal reform was adopted there.

The word "envelope" is obviously of French origin, and any such covers in use were probably rude enough, as machine-made envelopes, now so common, were unknown before 1840. Even the "lick of the gum" placed on the flap at Capt. Basil Hall's suggestion did not make its appearance till the succeeding year.

It looks almost as if the envelope con- taining Emmet's and other letters men- tioned by FRANCESCA (ante, p. 397) had been forwarded by another channel than that of the Post Office. The history of "letter smuggling/' which flourished under the old system, is curious, but too long to tell. As the letters of the privileged classes went free of charge, while those of the unprivileged were heavily taxed to meet any deficiency of revenue, discontent, and consequently eva- sion, were rife. When an unprivileged citizen of London paid over 61. for a packet of letters

Sosted at Deal, and Sir John Burgoyne III. 3r some easily pocketable dispatches sent him from England to Dublin, one wonders how much the Emmet envelope of letters, if sent unsmuggled, from Paris to Dublin, would have been charged to its recipient.

ELEANOR C. SMYTH. Harborne.

With great respect, I venture to differ from MRS. SMYTH. I have just finished editing ' The Creevey Papers ' from a vast mass of correspondence covering the period from 1793 to 1838. Thomas Creevey died in the latter year. Envelopes, as we know them, began to appear in his correspondence about the year 1827 or 1828, if I rightly remember. I took a note of it at the time, but cannot lay hands upon it now.

HERBERT MAXWELL.

I have culled from several sources the following relative to notes on above reference.