Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/288

 238 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. vi. SEPT. 22,1900. Queen of Navarre, who became the mother of his children. She brought him the famous badge of the red rose of Provins, better known as the red rose of Lancaster. These roses were said to have been originally brought from the East by Crusaders to Provins. A. R. BAYLEY. H. T. B. wants a prince, and he may have some difficulty in finding one. Lady Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox (died 1578), had all the required distinctions, and a few more to boot. According to the pompous inscription placed by James I. on her tomb, nothing less than a regal system revolved round her. Daughter of the queen-dowager of James IV., Margaret Tudor, oy her second marriage, she was sister of James V., mother of "Kinge Henry I." (Darnley), and aunt of Mary, Queen of Scots. Her great-grandfather was Edward IV., her grandfather Henry VII., her uncle Henry VIII., her "cousing germane" Edward VI., and her grandchild the maker of her epitaph himself. "Havinge to her great - grandmother and grandmother two Queenes, both named Elizabeth," she was niece of "Marie the French Queene," and Mary and Elizabeth of England were her " cousyns germaynes." Lady Margaret was not beloved by Queen Elizabeth, for whom she was a little too sharp, and she did not live to see the success of her great design, the crowning of her grandson James, King of England and Scotland. As for princes, Ed- mund Crouchback was the son, brother, and uncle of kings. But one naturally thinks of John of Gaunt, buried in St. Pauls. He was son of Edward III., brother of the Black Prince (by some called Edward IV.—it is not easy to say why), uncle of Richard II., and father of Henry IV. It was probably not his fault that he did not die a king, for, irre- spective of his English designs, he was very near the crown of Castile. GEORGE MARSHALL. Sefton Park, Liverpool. THACKERAY'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO 'PUNCH (9th S. vi. 149).—The verses referred to are not by Thackeray, but by another Punch hand. The false ascription was made origin- ally in a book published years ago in the United States, and it has recently been repeated in an ill-informed series of papers issued in an American literary publication. M. H. SPIELMANN. JEWISH CALENDAR (9th S. vi. 127).—The following quotation may interest PERPLEXED : "At that period no constant Jewish calendar as yet existed therefore the task of ascer- taining the exact corresponding Christian dates or the weekdays of Jewish dates becomes difficult." Further, "a constant calendar like that which we now possess was] compiled in the year 359." So before A.D. 359 all exact comparison is hopeless, and the exact date given as 359 A.D. is epochal because it is said that the Jews had used the Seleucidan calendar till then. MR. LYNN will see how this statement affects his calculations concerning the Nativity and the Resurrection. Our views cannot be confirmed by Jewish dates, nor can they be refuted thereby. A. HALL. Highbury, N. ST. ANNE'S CHURCH, BLACKFRIARS (9th S. vi. 48, 117).—The passage from Stow quoted by COL. PRIDEAUX, though somewhat obscure, seems certainly to point to the existence of a parish or parish church of St. Anne before the destruction of the Friars' church. It is worthy of note, however, that no such parish occurs in the 'Nomina Beneficiorum Lon- doniarum' in 31 Edward I. in the ' Liber Custumarum' (pp. 228-30, Rolls edition) or in the list of parish churches in Fabyan's ' Chronicle,' vol. ii. (p. 295 of Ellis's edition of 1811). This would suggest that such a parish, if existing, must have been created at the end of the fifteenth or in the first half of the sixteenth century. H. A. HARBEN. A POEM ATTRIBUTED ToMlLTON(9thS. vi. 182> —MR. FORD says that he copied the whole of it in 1868. He does not seem to have been aware that the whole poem first saw the light, with a facsimile of the handwriting, in a volume which Mr. Morley edited for the " Bayard Series," entitled 'The King and the Commons,' in which volume he wrote a very elaborate essay, discussing in full the ques- tion of its authenticity. E. MARSTON. The poem was published in the Times of 15 July, 1868, with a letter from Henry Morley. MR. FORD'S transcript contains the following discrepancies : for l( cist" read chest, for " cal- cined " read entered, for "prolific" aetific, for "earthy" earthly; doth in the last stanza omitted. W. T. It was hardly likely that a discovery which at the time excited the literary world should leave no trace in ' N. & Q.' This poem was printed at length in 4th S. ii. 75-6, and natur- ally drew forth various opinions : see the General Index to that series. W. C. B. FRENCH PRISONERS OF WAR IN ENGLAND (9th S. v. 269,380,465).—Your Masonic readers will be specially interested in the fact that Mr.