Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/251

 9 th S. II. SEPT. 24, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

243

the word Hagosteald, if ever it was used as a personal name, would show that its bearer was an unmarried person* or the child of such a person. And the inference would be the same whether the word were used as a personal name or as the name of a class. It is further to be noticed that in Anglo-Saxon MSS. Augustus and Augustinus are written Agustus and Agustinus. I should be glad to know whether any other derivation of the word hagosleald is possible or tenable. If it is not, the suggestion here offered will gain weight.

Unless we can connect monasteries of un- known origin with the Augustales, or, in some cases, possibly with the ordines decurionum, it is difficult to account for the origin of such practices as providing games for the populace and the exercise of municipal powers and duties. And even when foundation charters purport to be grants of these institutions from Anglo-Saxon kings and others, it is well to consider the question of their genuine- ness, as many of them are now known to be forgeries.t

It appears from two inscriptions that adjoining the Basilica Augusti Anniana in Puteoli was a temple of Augustus, and that a part of this temple was the court (curia) in which members of the college of decuriones, whom we may call town -councillors, passed resolutions.^ A similar temple adjoined the basilica at Fanum.

Now it is a remarkable coincidence that a roundish building, with four porticoes, stood near to the east end of the greater building at Hexham. Prior Richard says :

"Sunt autem, praeterea, in eadem villa duseadhuc aliae ecclesiae, una baud procul a muro matris ecclesise mirandi operis, et ipsa, scilicet, in modum turris erecta, et fere rotunda, a quatuor partibus totidem porticus habens, in honorem Sanctse Virginia dedi- cata. Altera, in honore Sancti Petri Apostoli, ali- quantulum remotior."

This description must be compared with the account given by Aelred, Abbot ol Rievaulx. In relating the miraculous escape of a young woman from a wretch who hac assaulted her, the author says :

" Est in civitate Augustaldensi ecclesia in honor* majoris ecclesise, tanto intervallo divisa, ut et
 * 3anctae Dei Genetricis extructa in orientali parte

Wulcker Vocab.,' 211, 11.
 * " Celibates [sic], hagsteald men." ' Wright

t See an article on 'The Evolution of the Charter, in the Quarterly Review, July, 1898.

Lange, ' Haus und Halle,' 1885, p. 198. He refer to 'Corpus Inscriptionum Lat.,' x. 1782, 1783.

Raine, ut supra, i. 14. According to Canon Raine, the site of the church of St. Peter i unknown.

trium intersit, et via patens transeuntibus non esit. Cum venisset itaque insanus ille prsedam uam impie ceperat crudeliter auferens, inter has .uas summte venerationis basilicas," &c.*

From another passaget we learn that the ioor of the lesser building was closed by a jar (sera).

For the student of architecture these pas- sages are of the highest importance. For it appears that at Hexham the lesser building '.n the east, which answers to the chancel or ihoir of later date, was separated from the greater building which corresponds to the lave and aisles of a more modern church Dy an open space (atrium). This atriwn, or ' open way for persons who passed across," )orresponds to the roofed transept in churches of later date. Here, then, we have the genesis of the cruciform church. The transept was originally an open space, or vestibule, J be- tween the lesser building and the greater.

To those who believe in the continuity of Roman institutions in Britain it will not seem a long step from the ordo Augustaliwm to the order of St. Augustine. To that order the canons of Hexham were ascribed.

S. O. ADDY.

MR. GLADSTONE'S MATERNAL ANCESTRY.

SIR WALTER SCOTT, in his fifth letter on ' Demonology and Witchcraft,' to J. G. Lock- hart (1830), condenses Pitcairn's account of the curious case of Katherine Munro, Lady Fowlis. The second wife of Robert, fifteenth Baron of Fowlis and chief of the warlike clan of Munro, herself descended on the spear side from the Earls of Ross and on the spindle from the Earls of Caithness, she sought to compass, by unlawful arts, the death of her elder stepson Robert Munro, afterwards six- teenth baron. She proposed to marry Robert's widow, after his removal, to her own brother, George Ross of Balnagowan, whose own wife was also to be conveniently made away with.

It was alleged at the trial that Lady Fowlis had employed the time-honoured agents usually associated with experiments in the black art for the destruction of her victims, namely, witches, models in clay of Robert Munro and Lady Balnagowan, and poisoned potions. No one, however, seems to have been much the worse for her machinations, except her own nurse, who, having spilled


 * Raine, ut mpra, i. 181.

t Ibid., i. 217.

I would refer to MR. WATSON'S valuable note on ' A Church Tradition,' ante, p. 150. If nave and chancel were sometimes separate buildings, the chancel might, after building the transept, be " non-central with the nave."