Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/151

 9" S. IV. Skit. 16,'99.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 239 author is the rector, are valuable and ample. Much has been 'written by Mr. Statham's pre- decessors concerning the town, port, and castle of Dover, and the question of the antiquity and origin of St. Mary-in-the-Castle is still in dispute. With the best authorities, Mr. Statham holds that the work is antecedent to Saxon days, and that the greater part of the structure was "erected in Roman days and under Roman supervision, if not by Roman workmen." Opposite views are, how- ever, held by writers of reputation, and we have no right or wish to speak ex cathedrd on the subject. Mr. Statham'saccountof Doveritself begins with the prehistoric period, when Britain was connected with the Continent, when the Thames was presumably an affluent of the Rhine, and when mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses stalked possibly where Dover now stands, or in what is now the bed of the English Channel. The flint implements of paleo- lithic times, and the invasions, probably by means of " rafts or rough boats," neolithic and Celtic, are duly dealt with, though the space occupied by these things in the book is not great. Our knowledge of Dover begins when Caesar found it, presumably, a permanent settlement, and made it, in his invasion of Britain, the first point of attack. In the days of Edward the Confessor it was a place of importance, and the high-handed proceedings of Eustache, Earl of Boulogne, in the exercise of the droit de gtte, led to one of the most picturesquely described of feudal quarrels, taken from Wrignt's ' Celt, Roman, and Saxon.' A very readable and exrellent account of the right of sanctuary in St. Martin-le-Grand is given on p. 78. Forty days' sanctuary was accorded, and the fugitive had then to leave the town by the high road. If he " went out of the way," and attempted to evade quitting the town, as he had sworn before the mayor at the church door to do, he was " thrown over Sharpness cliff," a speedy, easy, and effectual way of preventing a relapse into delinquency. As regards the port, the record is one of incessant effort to conquer the difficulties of the position and combat the south-west gales, things with which our successors seem likely to be as much occupied as we still are. Mr. Statham has consulted the best authorities, and made good use of them, illustrations and maps add to the attractions of a book that serves a definite purpose. The Marriage Registers of St. Dunstan's, Stepney. By Thomas Colyer - Fergusson. — Vol. II. 1640- 1696. (Privately printed.) To the appearance of the first volume of Mr. Colyer- Fergusson's ' Marriage Registers of St. Dunstan's, Stepney,' we drew attention 9th S. ii. 279, a mistake of ours, due to " pure ignorance," being duly re- buked 9th S. ii. 335. Less than a year has elapsed before the editor lias issued to his subscribers a second volume, carrying the register from 1640 to 1696, and restricted, like the former, to one hundred copies. A third volume, covering the period between 1697 and the passing of Lord Hard- wicke's Marriage Act of 1753, is in preparation, and will probably come as next year's boon. We an- ticipated that we should in the present volume find ourselves on the track of Pepys. Mr. Colyer-Fergus- son points out that mention of the Anna Rider, the daughter of Lady Priscilla Rider, of Bethnal Green, who on 26 May, 1674, married Samuel Sowton, of St. Peter-le-Poore, London, merchant, recalls the visit to her father Sir William Rider which Pepys records under the date 26 June, 1663. The refer- ence in question is of extreme interest, Sir William, who was Deputy-Master of the Trinity House under Lord Sandwich as Master, occupying the very house built by "the Blind Beggar of Bednall Green so much talked of and sang in ballads" (' Diary,' ed. Wheatley, iii. 183). Pepys mentions another daughter, a Mrs. Middleton, calling her " a fine woman." He also chronicles "a noble dinner, and a fine merry walk with the ladies alone after dinner in the garden, which is very pleasant; the greatest quantity of strawberrys I ever saw, and good, and a collation of great mirth, Sir J. Minnes [Mennis] reading a book of scolding very prettily. A de- lightful picture is this, contrasting favourably with other hospitalities of Sir William, in the course of one of which Pepys overate himself, with disastrous results. References in Pepys to Sir William are, indeed, numerous. A Charles Pepys, of St. Gre- forie, London, married Joane Smith, of St. Martin's, 'here is no means of identifying him with the Charles Pepys, the son of Thomas Pepys, and cousin of the diarist, by whose will he largely benefited. All we know from Mr. Wheatley con- cerning Charles is that he married and had children, while Joane Pepys is unmentioned. Petts and Penns and Days there are, and it is almost certain that a close search would throw light upon some of Pepys's associates. Mr. Colyer-Fergusson draws attention to the traces of French immigration, which are numerous, and to the proofs of the growth of the parish furnished by the augmenting number of marriages in each year. He also cites, d propos of the old seafaring families of Stepney, the marriage, 23 Feb., 1691 (1691/2), of Stephen Martin, of St. Saviour in Southwarke, mariner, and Elizabeth Hills, of Limehouse. Stephen was the brother-in-law of Admiral Sir John Leake, to whom, according to his epitaph in the churchyard, " he was still more closely united by the strictest acquaintance, having been his Captain and shared the same common Dangers in 20 years Wars." Like its predecessor, the present volume may be obtained of the editor at Wombwell House, Gravesend. Yule and Christmas. By Alexander Tille, Ph.D. (Nutt.) The judicious student of Teutonic antiquities will find this a book after his own heart. It is an inde- pendent investigation, by a learned and sober-minded scholar, into the origin and development of the festal and chronological institutions of the Germanic, Scandinavian, and English year. Some of the con- clusions at which Dr. Tille has arrived are, briefly stated, that the division of the Germanic year was originally tripartite, each season consisting of two " tides " of three-score days each, and that this was founded on a sixfold division of the year, which was of Oriental origin and ultimately derived probably from Egypt. The first of these " tides," which began about the middle of our November, was called Yule. A trace of the ancient Germanic New Year feast survived in Martinmas, 11 Novem- ber, which as an autumn festival was older and more popular than Michaelmas, and with Mid-May was long regarded as the legal half-year term in Scotland as well as in Germany. It was owing to contact with the Romans that 25 Decem- ber was adopted as the representative festival of Yuletide, and that the beginning of the year was shifted to the Kalends of January. To them also is due the division of the year into four seasons. Dr. Tille rather discredits the authority