Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/360

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

9 th S. III. MAY 6, '99.

give their parole in the mode it was required, were confined for security in Windsor Castle. Ed. 1856, vol. iii. pp. 182-3.

Thus, through the combined carelessness of Wright and Cunningham, we get the absurd result that Walpole is made responsible for a passage from a nineteenth-century historian.

In a letter to Mann of 14 Jan., 1745, George Townshend is mentioned, and is identified in Cunningham's edition (vol. i. p. 339), in a note to which Walpole's name is appended. This note, however, appears in the first edition of the 'Letters' to Mann (London, 3 vols., 1833) with the initial " D." affixed, showing that it was by the editor, Lord Dover, and not by Horace Walpole.

In a letter to Montagu of 25 May, 1745 (Cunningham's edition, vol. i. p. 363), Walpole mentions an inmate of Englefield Green (Sir Edward Walpole's residence), one Dr. Thirlby. A note on this reference to Thirlby is given by Cunningham. The history of this note may be traced as follows. It first ap- peared in lord Dover's edition of the 'Letters' to Mann (London, 3 vols., 1833), in its proper

S'ace as a note by Walpole on a letter to ann of 22 Dec., 1750. In the " collected " edition of 1840 it was transferred by Wright to its present position at the foot of the letter to Montagu of 25 May, 1745. Wright added on his own account the remark that Thirlby "died a martyr to intemperance, in 1751, in his sixty-first year," as well as a quotation from Nichols's 'Literary Anecdotes.' Cunningham accepted the note as belonging to the earlier letter (to Montagu), and re- tained Wright's quotation from the ' Literary Anecdotes,' but he dispensed with the com- ment on Thirlby's intemperance, arid trans- ferred the date of his death (which, it may be mentioned, is wrongly given as 1751 instead of 1753) to Walpole's portion of the note.

HELEN TOYNBEE. Dorney Wood, Burnham, Bucks.

Prinknash, pronounced Prinidge, appears in twelfth -century deeds as Prinkenesse. In 1121 the Abbot of Gloucester, describing the boundaries of lands in Buckholt belonging to the abbey and to Elias de Giffard and Pain Fitz- John and others, writes : " Et inter Kegem etElgarum de Kynemeresburia [Kims- bury] et nos de Prinkenesse, usque ad fagum ubi latro pependit " (' Hist, et Cartularium Monast. Glouc.,' vol. i. 205). Leland preserves this spelling. MRS. TOYNBEE would find the distance from Painshill, i.e., Paganhill or Pakenhill, further than she describes. Pains- wick is the place situated at the distance mentioned by her, unless she intended Pains- wick Hill, known by the country-folk here-

abouts as the Castles or the Beacon ; but that is not known as Painshill, I think.

ST. CLAIR BADDELEY. Painswick, Gloucestershire.

' La Fiancee du Hoi de Garbe ' is the title of a story in the French translation of Boc- caccio's ' Decameron.' La Fontaine, who tells many old tales, may also have told this one; 'but it is right to point out the original. That Walpole was referring to Boccaccio's tale is certain ; for the betrothed of the Roi de Garbe was shipwrecked, and was forced to become the mistress of a dozen men at least before she reached the arms of the king, who .knew nothing about her adventures. E. YARDLEY.

[In 'La Fiancee du Roi de Garbe' La Fontaine acknowledges obligation, without saying to whom.

He says: " Jeme suis ecartede mon original J'ai

suivi mon auteur en deux points seulement."]

BARCLAY'S 'ARGENIS' (9 th S. ii. 428, 538). For some, but not at all a full account of the ' Argenis,' see Dunlop's 'History of Fiction.' EDWARD H. MARSHALL, M.A.

' THE ROMANO-BRITISH CITY OF SILCHESTER ' (9 th S. iii. 100, 177, 256). Commenting upon my monograph ' The Romano-British City of Silchester ' and my suggested derivation of the place-name, MR. HARRISON has dis- regarded the widely divergent and almost antithetical significations of the Saxon word ceaster. The term was employed indifferently to denote a city or a fort, and, in some dis- tricts, simply an inhabited or occupied en- closure. A ceaster, therefore, does not always imply the existence of an aggregation of dwellings.

The adjectival prefix to a place-name which the Saxons would employ would be a term that would qualify the substantival element in a manner that would define and identify the site and distinguish it from other more or less similar sites a term that would dis- tinguish a ceaster they found in one district from ceasters in other districts. If, therefore, the Saxons found the ceaster (city, fort, or enclosure) of North Hampshire covered with dwellings, it is extremely probable that they would define the place by a term descriptive of that condition which must have been the most notable physical feature of the site an element of environment which marked the north of Hampshire ceaster as different from many other ceasters.

As they have in their language the word sel, meaning a dwelling-house, I suggested that the Saxons called the place Selceaster the dwelling-house ceaster, in consequence of the quite abnormal number of houses within the