Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/395

 ,

S. III. MAY 20, '99.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

389

iinning ('Reminiscences of Cambridge,'

>1. ii. cap. xi.) says, under the year 1821, that

i Bachelor of Arts of St. John's College,

n imed William John Smith," was the Deputy

squire Bedell and decipherer of the ' Diary,'

a id I do not think he was likely to have been

n istaken about a man who was for three

y >ars his assistant in the execution of the

I ities of his office. A. R. MALDEX.

Salisbury.

ST. MEDARD. The parish church of Little Bytham, in the diocese and county of Lin- coln, is said to be the only one in the United Kingdom dedicated to this saint. Can any one suggest why the dedication should have found place here 1 The village of Corby is about five miles from this. Corbie is about thirty miles from Noyon, Medard's see. Does this bear upon the question ; or is it mere coincidence? E. GILES.

IDENTIFICATION OF PORTRAIT WANTED Half figure of a divine, wearing cassock, cap, and deep collar. Three-quarter face towards the right, left hand placed on breast, right resting upon a book placed open on a table. Background, on left a curtain, on right a groined chamber with four windows. Beneath :

Farewell, vain world ! As thou hast been to me Dust and a Shadow ; those I leave with thee : The unseen Vitall Substance I committ To him that's Substance, Light and Life to it. The Leaves and Fruit here dropt are holy seed, Heaven's heirs to generate ; to heale and feed : Them also thou wilt flatter and molest, But shalt not keep from Everlasting Rest.

The plate is 4$ in. by 4|in., and finely en- graved work of probably the middle of the seventeenth century. Is this a scarce or common print ; and is the name of the engraver known 1 BEDERICSWORTH.

EDWARD JONES. Can any of your readers give me information respecting one Edward Jones ? He was, I believe, an agent to Lore Mostyn for the Pengwern estate ; he also owned land in the neighbourhood of St Asaph. He had married a daughter of the late Edward Mathews, of Llysfaen, North Wales. He was a nephew of the late Theodore Jones, of St. Asaph. It would be 1790, or about that time. M. L. R.

SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S CLASS MOTTO. Can any classical correspondent supply the original Greek text of "On earth there i~ nothing great but man ; in man there i nothing great but mind " ? I may say thi is quoted in Charron of course in French.

LECTOR.

THE PLACE-NAME OXFORD. (9 th S. iii. 44, 309.)

SOME additional information on this sub- ect appears to be desirable. The boun- daries mentioned in Ceadwalla's grant are stated in the 'Codex Diplomaticus,' No. 1171, n the 'Cartularium Saxonicum,' vol. iii. D. 68, in Dugdale's ' Monasticon,' and in the Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon,' edited >y Stevenson.

The pith of the whole question is this. Dan the boundaries of Ceadwalla's grant to
 * he early abbey of Abingdon, from "Stanford
 * o eoccenforda," be identified with the

latural features which may still be observed Tom Sandford-on-Thames to the bridge over ihen no amount of argument can prevail against the name " eoccenforda " being the earliest form of the name Oxford.
 * he river north of Osney Mill ? If they can,

Dugdale writes of the first site of the abbey of Abingdon being in Bagley Wood, bhe " bacganleah " of the charter, as if it was an established fact. He says :

"It seems to be agreed that the original site of the abbey was somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bagley Wood." 'Monasticon Anglicanum,' i. 505.

He says also :

"Ceadwalla, the son and successor of Centwin, who added the town of Seoyechesham to the possessions of the monks, is said to have ordered their removal to it, and that then the name of Seovechesham in consequence of its connexion with the monastery was changed to Abingdon."

The removal of the Anglo-Saxon abbey to what is now Abingdon was a similar removal to that historical removal of the New Minster, at Winchester, to Hyde, and to other instances which can be cited.

I see no reason why the "port strete"of "abbendune" in Ceadwalla's boundaries should not have been a country way or road leading to the abbey enclosure. In North Berkshire there is an old country road still called the Portway, and in North Hampshire there is another.

I point to the name "eoccenforda" in Ceadwalla's boundaries as the earliest form of the name Oxford, whether the hitherto supposed earliest form is that on coins of King Alfred's time, or in the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle' of the time of his son. This name "eoccenforda" is more than two centuries earlier than the earliest name of Oxford hitherto recognized. On the authority of Mr. Kemble, to whom all students of early Anglo-Saxon history are deeply indebted,