Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/515

 s. xii. DEC. 26, 1903.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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at the top of the tower of the historic parish church. The date chosen is the first Monday after

St. Andrew's Day, and yesterday afternoon the faithful jurats and freemen ascended the tower to choose a successor to Mr. W. Miall Green, a well- known yacht owner of Kensington. Three new jurats having been elected, they held a private meeting behind an imaginary screen, the rest of the spectators being considered non-existent for the moment, and then it was announced that the honours of the day had fallen upon Mr. John Bate- man, the (Squire of Brightlingsea, who, some years ago, revived the quaint custom, and presented the

chain of office, consisting of silver sprats and golden oyster shells. A number of qualified residents afterwards paid eleven pennies as the price of the freedom of Brightlingsea. which honour carries with it exemption from jury service in Essex. Later Mr. Miall Green, who had previously held office two years in succession, entertained a number of townspeople at the local hotel."

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

SIR HENRY NEVIL : " NE VILE VELIS." Can any reader of ' N. & Q.' tell me who bore the motto " Ne vile veils " in Elizabethan times, and the dates of birth, marriage, and death of Sir Henry Nevil, second husband of Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Bacon, and widow of Sir Eobert D'Oylie 1 L. N.

CHASUBLE AT WARRINGTON CHURCH. Can MR. ROBERT PIERPOINT or any other War- rington contributor say anything about a por- tion of an ancient embroidered chasuble found somewhere under the floor of Warrington 'Old Church about 1830, and given by the vicar of the time (by what authority ?) to the then Roman Catholic priest there ? Has this vestment ever been recovered for the mother church of Warrington?!

T. CANN HUGHES, M.A., F.S.A.

Lancaster.

ST. MARY AXE : ST. MICHAEL LE QUERNE. (3 th S. x. 425 ; xi. 110, 231 ; xii. 170, 253, 351.)

I AM afraid that in my former papers on this subject I did not express myself with sufficient clearness, as MR. MACMICHAEL seems to have misapprehended my meaning. In concluding my remarks I will endeavour to make myself a little more intelligible.

MR. MACMICHAEL observes, with reference to my statement that no explanation has been given for the designation of St. Mary's Church not having been latinized "adsecurim" instead of " apud Axe," that one would hardly have thought an explanation necessary, and that so to describe it would have been a unique exception to what was a general rule, namely,

to describe the situation of churches in plain English and according either to their local associations or to some architectural pecu liarity. Here comes in MR. MACMICHAEL'S misapprehension. I never once asserted that when people were speaking or writing Eng- lish they did not describe the churches in "plain English." My contention was that when people spoke or wrote about the chu-rches in Latin they described them in "plain Latin," and not in a language that was neither one thing nor the other.

Every church had its own plain English name or names (for some had several), and when people spoke English one of those names was used. But when the official scribes described the church in Latin they trans- lated the designation into Latin, if it denoted or was associated with a thing, or common noun. But when the designation was derived from a proper name, such as the name of a place or an individual, the scribes did not attempt to latinize it. The church of St. Michael le Querne was known in English as St. Michael atte Corne, which was latinized into S. Michael ad Bladum, "Corne" not being a proper name. Such an expression as St. Michael atte Bladum or S. Michael ad Corne was unknown. Again, take another old church, which was destroyed at the Reformation St. Nicholas Shambles. This was known in the time of the Edwards as "St. Nicholas atte Fleysshameles," which was translated in legal documents as " S. Nico- laus apud Macellum," or "ad Macellum," or "de Macellis," or "ad Macellas." But we never find " St. Nicholas atte Macellum " or " S. Nicolaus apud Flesh-shambles." There- fore when St. Mary's Church is called in Latin documents "S. Maria apud Ax," while in English it appeared as " St. Mary atte Ax," or "attenAx," or "atte Nax," I felt there were strong grounds for concluding that the word "Ax" denoted a proper name ; for if it had been derived from an implement, whether used naturally or as the sign of a house, the Latin word securis, an axe, would, in accord- ance with the general rule, have been em- ployed. MR. MACMICHAEL may not agree with this reasoning, but I trust I have made my meaning clear. When he maintains that the "Axe" was no part of the church's dedi- cation formula, I can only reply that I never said or implied that it was. These additional names were only popular designations, given to distinguish one church from another having the same dedication. As to the " probability " that some of these designations were derived from house-signs, it is obvious that the idea of probability is a matter of individual