Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/429

 ^s.n.Nov.26,'98.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

421

LONDON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1898.

CONTENTS. -No. 48.

If OTBS : Within the Four Seas, 421 Robert Andrewt Khartum Xeres Place-names in "Head," 422 "Aerial tour" Henry Scogan and Chaucer Aurora Borealis Alured Cornburgh, 423 "st" Two Quotations, 424 Mann Old Postage Stamps " Canonicals "Catherine Maria Fanshawe * Le Pain Benit de Monsieur 1'Abbg de Marigny,' 425 " Whisky " Characters in Fielding's Novels, 426.

QUERIES : Ribbonism John Wingfield Richard de Stourton, 426 Brampton Pillatery Rev. P. Stannard Biggleswade " Soot " Parish Registers " Develope- ment " Haileybury " Welking "Alabaster Group, 427 Barclay's 'Argenis' Evelyn's ' Diary' Thornton Theatre-Lighting" Tipuler "Browning's ' Pacchiarotto ' " Le bon temps ou nous tions si malheureux ! "Funeral Customs, 428 Wollaston Arms " Pig-a-back " Kendrick Family, 429.

EEPLIES: The Church (?) at Silchester, 429 Rounds or Rungs "Feggy" "Fegges after peace" 'The Farmer of St. Ives' Author Wanted, 430 New Testament Query Grammar of the A.V. and Prayer Book, 431 Collector's Mark Writing Engine Pattens, 432 Bridget Cheynell St. Fursey Claret and Vin-de-Grave, 433' Comin' thro' jthe Rye,' 434 Keats's Epitaph The Domesday " Mansio" Pillar Dollar "La Trinit6 des Vins" The Judge and the Treadwheel Sir J. Rudston, 435 Hebrew Numerals Mountgymru Books on Gaming "Right Honourable" French Proverb Silhouettes, 436 Peter the German Arms Wanted Mill Prison, Plymouth The First Lord Mayor, 437 Herbert's ' Memoirs of Charles I.' Byard's Leap Obscurities of Authors, 438.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Lord Ashbourne's ' Pitt ' Groome's 'Gypsy Folk - Tales ' Hamilton's 'Mr. Gladstone' Friswell's 'James Hain Friswell.'

.'Notices to Correspondents.

WITHIN THE FOUR SEAS.

THE learned and industrious " T. B., of the Inner Temple, Esquire," amongst other matters not so attractive in historical and literary history, compiled the well-known collection of quaint 'Antient Tenures of Land and Jocular Customs of some Manors.' Amongst them is that of Renham in Middle- sex, a tenure in chief by the service of finding for our lord the king in the army, wherever it should be within the four seas of England "infra quatuor maria Anglise " a horse of price, a sack, and a buckle for forty days. Blount cites also the tenure of Upton, Northamptonshire, by finding a man-at-arms in the king's war whenever it should be necessary within the four seas of England.

Sometimes the formula drops the England, and confines itself (as in the holding of Siber- toft in Northamptonshire) to service " infra quatuor maria" (so Blount, quoting a Plea Roll of 3 Edward I.), which elsewhere in the 'Testa de Nevill,' p. 32 appears as service " infra metas Angliae."

A good deal of minor importance attaches to an ascertainment, if it be possible, of the time and circumstances of origin of this peculiar phrase. Has it been investigated

anywhere so as to trace the earliest occur- rence? What were the four seas, and what the ancient names of each ? Was the Scottish bea, the Mare Scoticum or Scotswater, the Mare Fresicum of Nennius, now the Firth of Forth, one of them? And does the term point to a time when Lothian and Cumbria were reckoned English ground ?

The early names of the different seas around the British coast are well worthy of inquiry. Thus Beda calls our "North Sea or German Ocean "so I was taught by rote to say at school by the name of " Mare Orien- tale," which, from the insular standpoint, is a very proper title. Adam of Bremen ('Hist. Eccl.,' ch. 208), on the other shore, calls it the Frisian Ocean (Oceanum Frisonicum), which the Romans had called British. Pomponius Mela and other Roman writers quite justify Adam's statement as to the comprehensive- ness of the Oceanus Britannicus.

What we now call the English Channel, and our French friends dub La Manche, Strabo named the Bretannic Strait, whilst Asser entitled it the Southern Sea, Mare Meri- dianum. In the fourteenth century a current title was Mare Anglicanum ('Rotuli Scotiae,' i. 440, 442); and the " Narrow Seas " soon had a wide vogue both in prose and verse.

On the west coast Nennius names for us the Mare Ibernicum, which Hoveden men- tions as " Mare Magnum quo itur in Hiber- niam." It appears to have been known to the Northmen as Irlands Haf, contrasting with the Great Haf ("Magnus Haff," 'Acts Parl. Scot.,' i. 420, and see map of Scotland in Dr. Joseph Anderson's translation of the 'Orkneyinga Saga'), lying further north and embracing the Hebrides. "La Mer de Irlande " was a familiar term from the thir- teenth century ('Roll of Carlaverock,' ed. Wright, p. 25).

The ever - to - be - reverenced Coke upon Littleton (fo. 107) cut the knot rather than solved the problem. "Infra quatuor maria," he says, "that is, within the kingdome of England and the dominions of the same kingdome." But this leaves us in the dubiety we began with about the sea on the north. We need to date the phrase first, then we may proceed to expound it.

Finally, it should be stated that from at least a period well on in the twelfth century the sea on the north may be taken to have been the Solway. William the Conqueror's traditional grant of Cumberland to Ranulf le Meschyn extended on its northern bounds bo "the river towards Scotland called Sulewaht, to the true marches there between England and Scotland" (' Distributio Cum-