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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. vm. AUG. 3, 1901.

there was such a person, and that he was the owner of a book of architectural drawings formerly belonging to Horace Walpole, and now preserved in the Soane Museum, nothing further is known about him.

I do not know whether attention has been drawn to the following warrant, belonging to Mr. E. Beresford Chancellor, which seems to show that Thorpe was employed as a surveyor for the Duchy of Cornwall :

"Whereas there is present occasion to employ the bearer hereof, John Thorpe, Esq r, about the surveying of the manor of Olave and the manors of Wymondham, Aylesham, and East Deereham, in the county of Norfolk, and the manor of Walton [en] Trymley and Hecham, in the county of Suffolk, for his Highness's [ ], We pray you to pay

and deliver unto him, by way of [interest?], the sum of fifty pounds, taking his acquisence for receipt thereof. And in so doing this shall be your warrant, from his Highness's Council Chamber in Fleet Street, the last day of April, 1621.

Your ever loving friends, HENRY ADAM Rio. SMYTHE

Jx. FULLKBTON Jo. TREVOR

O. CROMWELL.

To our ever loving friend Sr Adam Newton, Gent. and Baronet, his Highness's Treasurer or Receiver General." * Life of Charles I.,' by E. Beresford Chancellor, p. 54.

JOHN HEBB.

Canonbury Mansions, N.

HELICON. I pointed out a short while ago in 'N. & Q.' (9 th S. vii. 235) a passage in which Chaucer confounds Helicon with the Hippocrene, and places it on Parnassus. But I did not observe then that Spenser has transferred Chaucer's lines, with their double mistake, to his own poetry. Perhaps the two great poets have done much towards spreading the common error that Helicon is the same as the Hippocrene :

That in Parnassus dwel Besyde Helicon the clere wel.

Chaucer, ' The House of Fame.' And eke you virgins that on Parnasse dwell Whence floweth Helicon, the learned well.

Spenser, ' Shepheard's Calender, April.' E. YARDLEY.

"THE QUEEN'S HEAD AND ARTICHOKE." (See 9 th S. vii. 331.)-The "Artichoke" pro- bably owes its origin as a sign, like the "Pine Apple, the "Orange Tree," the "Lemon Tree, and the " Olive Tree," all London trade signs, to the fact of that vegetable not being indigenous, and to its adoption as a trade cognizance when first introduced as a food into this country. Judging from the fact of Vertues engraving exhibiting Mary of Eng- land holding an artichoke in her hand it may have been so introduced from France bv that royal lady, who, after being widowed by

Louis XII. of France, became Duchess of Suffolk in 1515, for it is significant that the " archicokk," as it was called, i.e., the globe artichoke, was an item of frequent occurrence in the Privy Purse expenses of Henry VIII. from November, 1529, to December, 1532. And considering that it was deemed a dish fit for a king, it is not surprising to find that it was paid dearly for in proportion to the value of the then current coin. One item runs : " Paied to a servant of maister Tresorer in rewarde for bringing Archicokks to the King's grace to York Place iiijs. iiijd." (see Rhind's 'Hist, of the Vegetable Kingdom'). The sign of the "Artichoke" was not confined to one kind of trade. It was a bookseller's sign near Ludgate in 1693, and in Old Bedlam in 1686 (see * Booksellers' and Printers' Signs,' the Bibliographer, part x.) ; and a milliner's one Susannah Fordham "att the Hartichoke in y e Royal Exchange sold all sorts of fine poynts, laces, and linnens, and all sorts of gloves and ribbons, and all other sorts of millinery wares" (Bagford Bills, Harl. Misc.). The "globe" species of the vegetable is represented on a card as the sign of a shop evidently identical with the foregoing in the Royal Exchange, in 1791, where laces and linens were sold (Banks Coll. Shop-bills). It was also the sign of a " Looking-glass shop " near the New Exchange, Strand (Bagford, Harl. Coll. 5996, No. 156), and of a tavern "past the eastern entrance to the West India Docks, famous for its whitebait." According to the Postboy of 5 August, 1710, this sign distinguished Nos. 24 and 25, Lombard Street, now occupied by Messrs. Alexander & Co. (see further F. G. H. Price's 'Signs of Lombard Street').

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL. Wimbledon Park Road.

[MR. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS gave at 6 th S. ix. 85 a quotation from Oldys's ' Life of Dr. Moffet ' (1746) containing the extract relating to the artichokes brought to Henry VIIL in the twenty-second year of his reign. This is the earliest instance quoted under ' Artichoke ' in the ' H.E.D.']

DEFINITION OF DUEL. As need hardly be said, the 'H.E.D.' contains some excellent definitions of " duel," but in the present decadent condition of the duello in France one may surely be added from the Paris cor- respondent of the Times, who recorded recently that "a performance with swords took place this afternoon between M. Max Regis and M. Gerault-Richard."

POLITICIAN.

i ^ SCOTTISH SONG. In the 'Songs of Scot- land Chronologically Arranged,' third edition (Alexander Gardner), a song entitled " Here