Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/434

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. vn. JUNE i, 1901.

" Then Henry the sixt, in the 24 of his raigne, to the honour of the Trinitie, gave licence to ^)ame Joan Astley, sometime his nurse, to R. Cawood and T. Smith, to found the same a Fraternitie, perpetu- ally to have a Master and two Gustos, with Brethren and Sisters, &c. This Brotherhood was in do wed with Lands, more than thirtie pound by the yeere, and was suppressed by Edward the sixt."

Again, in Pennant's 'London Improved,' p. 227, appears the following :

"Hall of the Holy Trinity. A few doors above Little Britain, on the site now occupied by Trinity Court in Aldersgate Street, stood an Hospital or Cell, to the priory of Clugny in France, belonging to the brotherhood of The Holy Trinity, founded in 1373. This, in the reign of Henry VI., was changed into a brotherhood of priests, to celebrate divine service in the church of St. Botolph ; partly effected by the parishioners, and partly by Joan Astley, nurse to Henry VI. This continued till the dis- solution of religious houses by Henry VIII. ; and being spared by the fire of London, their hall was within a few years past a non-jurors' chapel ; a vestry ; a school-room ; then Aldersgate Street Coffee House ; and last of all we understand it has been hired by Mr. Prince, as a dancing academy."

This seems to place the history and situation of the hall beyond a doubt, as well as to illus- trate the fate of the lesser monastery buildings after the evil days of the dissolution.

WM. NORMAN. 6, St. James's Place, Plumstead.

THE POET LAUREATE'S BIRTHPLACE. Errors are difficult to eradicate, so the sooner the fol- lowing correction is made known the better it will be for the thousands who are studying Ruse's ' Helps to "Lyra Heroica " ; (Macmillan & Co.). In Mr. Ruse's 'Helps' it is stated that Mr. Alfred Austin is a native of Devonshire. Believing that he was born at Headingley, near Leeds, I have given a biographical notice of him in 'Yorkshire Anthology,' and I have received confirma- tion of this from the Poet Laureate himself. J. HORSPALL TURNER.

Idle.

"CARKING CARE." This is not an un- common expression, but apparently its exact meaning is unknown to some people. In looking over Mr. Churton Collins's edition of ' The Early Poems of Alfred, Lord Tenny- son,' 1900, I came across (p. 34) the following curious note on the line in ' A Dirge ' : Thee nor carketh care nor slander.

" Carketh. Here used transitively, ' troubles,' though in Old English it is generally intransitive, meaning to be careful or thoughtful ; it is from the Anglo-Saxon Carian; it became obsolete in the seventeenth century. The substantive carle, trouble or anxiety, is generally in Old English coupled with care."

I fear Mr. Collins has not studied his Murray with the attention that work deserves.

Had he done so, he would have ascertained that cark and care (verb carian) have nothing etymologically to do with one another, the former word being Anglo-French and the latter Teutonic. The real meaning of " cark- ing care " is burdensome care, and to cark is to load, and thence to harass or vex. The primary meaning is transitive, and it was not used intransitively till a later period. It has hardly yet become obsolete, at least among the minor poets, and in the eighteenth century it was used by Thomson, Richardson, and Berkeley. There seems no necessity in an edition of Tennyson for notes of this kind, but if they are inserted at all, they should be accurate.

Other errors in the book may be due to the printer, such as the consistent misspelling of the name of Edward FitzGerald, the attribu- tion to Browning of ' Fefine at the Fair ' (p. 40), and the strange transformation of the late Lord Houghton's name into " Moncton Milne " (p. 250) ; but they have rather an irritating effect upon the reader.

Sir Henry Wotton used to say, if we may believe Lord Verulam, "that Critticks are like Brushers of Noble-men's cloaths" (' Apophth.,' No. 64, p. 83, ed. 1625). Tennyson, of all writers, should have careful valeting. W. F. PRIDEAUX.

WE must request correspondents desiring infor- mation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that the answers may be addressed to them direct.

CONSOLIDATED INDEXES. Will a dozen or so students of genealogy join me in forming a club for the making of what, for want of a better term,! will call "consolidated indexes"? It is quite impossible for an individual, in making a genealogical search, to encompass a tithe of the existing indexes which are likely to assist him, contained as they are in hundreds, if not thousands, of scattered books of various classes, MSS., and records, whose numbers are increasing every year.

My proposal is this : Let a club be formed, and let each member devote himself to names beginning with one particular letter of the alphabet, proceeding to the formation of a " consolidated index " of all names beginning with that letter. Thus one member takes A names, another B names, another C names, and so on to Z. Each copies upon a system, from every index he can lay hands on small indexes preferred the names beginning with his especial letter. The system is perfectly