Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/53

 8.ii. JULY 16, m]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

45

was of "great antiquity," and also that it was of " intense compactness, hardness, and durability," a small piece being chipped off and one of its surfaces polished. The date of it is said to be confirmed " to the third cen- tury of the Christian era by three incised letters Til, which are in exact keeping with many Roman inscriptions of the conquerors of the Britons scattered throughout the country." When temporarily removed to the Abbey stoneyard, it was viewed by the public, and it is recorded that the opinion generally expressed was that it was a "veri table Koman relic, a landmark or boundary, the three letters signifying 'Terminus No. 2,' or some such military expression." It has been sug- gested that it may have been buried for many centuries and at last brought to light by the gravedigger, who, taking it to be an ordinary gravestone arid nothing more, raised it with- out comment quietly to the surface and left it there, either in indifference or "ignorance as to its claim to great antiquity." Perhaps some reader of 'N. & Q.' versed in these matters will pay a visit and report impres- sions after inspection. I merely record its existence. W. E. HARLAND-OXLEY.

14, Artillery Buildings, Victoria Street, S.W.

NEWSPAPERS. The following fact is a use- ful illustration of the very slow manner in which knowledge spreads. A small farmer who lives on Kelsey Car, a district some eight or nine miles from here, adjoining the river Ancholrae, called last summer on a newspaper agent in this town and purchased a news- paper of the day. He then asked for some more. The agent, not clearly understanding what he required, said, " Do you want them all alike?" "No" replied the farmer, "I want them all of different sorts. You see, I don't get from home ofter than once in two or three months ; so when I do come to a town I like to buy a good lot of papers, that I may see what has been going on since I was last abroad." This reminds me that I was told, many years ago, by one of the first settlers in Van Diemen's Land, that in the early days of the colony the persons who took English newspapers used to receive them in three- monthly packages. EDWARD PEACOCK.

Dunstan House, Kirton-in-Lindsey.

THE DEVIL'S DAM. Butler in his ' Hudi- bras ' has the lines :

That bore them like the Devil's dam, Whose son and husband are the same.

Towneley, in a note to his French translation of. ' Hudibras, ' says that these lines allude to Sin and Death in Milton's ' Paradise Lost.' The third part of ' Hudibras,' in which the

lines appear, was published after ' Paradise Lost,' though the first and second parts appeared before Milton's poem. But Death is not the Devil ; and Shakspeare mentioned the Devil's dam in his plays before Milton was born. Without doubt Shakspeare and Butler referred to Lilith, whose double con- nexion with Asmodexis was exactly that which Butler mentions. Butler's lines con- firm what I have remarked before in 'N. & Q.,' namely, that Shakspeare, in his expression of "the Devil and his dam," referred to Asmodeiis and Lilith. Asmodeiis is the same as Samael. E. YARDLEY.

[See 8 th S. iv. 442; v. 442; vi. 44, 284; vii. 203; viii. 25.]

BOOKSELLER'S STOCK, SEVENTEENTH CEN- TURY. The following extract from wills and inventories at York, found among the MSS. of the late Canon Raine, is interesting as showing the stock of a thriving bookseller, oopkbinder, and stationer in the metropolitan city at the beginning of the Civil War. Mark Foster, the tradesman whose goods are appraised in this document, had his shop under shadow of the Minster, and is named in Davies's 'Memoir of the York Press,' p. 56, as the publisher of a political broadside (B.M. 190/G 13, No. 45) printed by Stephen Bulkley, the Royalist printer there, in 1642, just a month before the two Houses, by special resolution, forbade the printing, publishing, or uttering any book or pamphlet reflecting upon the proceedings of Parliament.

"1644, May 2. Inventory. Marke Foster, of Yorke, stationer, 'praised by Fr. Mawburne and Raiph Brocklebancke, stationers, Wm. Calvert and Win. Davy, pinners:

" j parcell of course pastboards, &*. ; j old inapp, I*. ; j litle payre of playinge tables with men, 3*.

" To printed bookes in folio and nine paper bookes in folio, 3/. All the bookes on the second foreshelf e in

Suarto, 31. ; third foreshelf e in octavo, 21. ; fowerth sreshelfe in octavo, 21. ; fifte foreshelfe in octavo, 2/. ; all the bookes on the five short end shelves next the Minster doore, 67. 10*. ; all the other bound bookes on 12 shorte shelves att the lowe end of the shop, being all old ones, '21. All the other stitched bookes and printed papers in the shopp, II. 10s. ; 3 reames of white paper, I/. IN. ; all the other wast papers and some old mapps in the shopp and imperfect bookes, fts. 8d. ; 2 pounds of softe wax, 2s. The stooles in the shopp, 2*. ; 2 cuttinge presses with knife stone and old tubb. I/. ; 2 sowinge presses, 3a. 4d. ; all the other boards about the shopp, 2*. 0(1. ; j payre of weigh scales with other implements, 2*. m. Dec. 22, 1G44. Administration granted to Thos. Bambrough of York, yeoman." RICHD. WELFORD.

B. R. HAYDON, THE PAINTER. Where did Haydon the painter die? Mr. Wheatley ('London Past and Present') says at No. 4, Burwood Place, Edgware Road. Mr. Wil-