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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. ix. FEB. is, 1902.

not infrequently contradict each other, for not only were the mediseval chroniclers sometimes almost as regardless of chronological accuracy as we moderns, but there were various ways of recording time in common use, so that without that minute know- ledge which so very few of us possess it is otten impossible to tell what system the writer had taken for his guide. We are pleased to find that as to names o! persons Mr. Morison has been content to use those which are commonly accepted, though he must have been aware that it would lay him open to adverse criticism. We need not say that this is, strictly speaking, an error which on certain occa- sions ought to be sternly condemned; but the great point in a work of reference such as this is that it should be handy, so that we can find our way about in it, and be spared the pains of racking our brains to remember how the name of some obscure potentate was spelt by his contemporaries. The pedigrees near the end of the volume will be found useful, but they might have been made fuller than they are with advantage. That of the house of Bonaparte is miserably thin. Surely all the descendants of Charles, the father of Napoleon I., should have been given. It is true that to-day no member of the race is among the sovereigns of Europe; but it is mere pedantry not to regard them as scions of a royal house with chances in the future. We think, too, that it might have been well to give a list of the illegitimate children of Charles II. and James II,, with their marriages. Readers of the history of the Stuart time do not, we have observed, always carry the needful infor- mation in their minds. The compiler has given more than he promised. The title-page leads us to anticipate that the end would be reached in 1870, but the entries are carried on for ten further years.

Patent Rolls of the Reign of Henry III., 1216-1225.

(Stationery Office.)

THIS, the earliest volume of the Patent Rolls of King Henry III., has not the name of the editor on its title-page, but the preface is signed by Sir H. C. Maxwell Lyte, and we learn that the text has been prepared by Mr. J. G. Black. We believe that there are no omissions or condensations. The text is given as it stands in its original Latin. From the second to the ninth year of the reign the rolls are in duplicate, or one is a transcript of the other. The latter is the more probable, as words or passages cancelled in the original are almost always left out in the duplicate.

The volume must be of great interest not only to historical students, but to all persons engaged in topographical inquiries or on the history and growth of surnames. Members of the great families are mentioned over and over again, and we encounter a very fair share of the common folk. Surnames, though coming into use, were not by any means stable as yet. Men changed them at will, or had them altered for them when they moved from one place to another. In a list of certain persons, all of whom, we may presume, lived in the neighbourhood of Tavistock, we find a Robertum Cocum, an Adam Fabrum, and an Adam Longum. These people were no doubt called by their friends Cook, Smith, and Long. Did the last one, we wonder, acquire his name because he was abnormally tall ? or was it given him on account of his occupying a long strip of ploughland or meadow ? The latter is, we think, the more probable suggestion. A man called Hum- phrey de la Slowe lived in Buckinghamshire in

1225. There is a possibility that he may have acquired his name from some town or village, but we strongly incline to the belief that it originated from some boggy place or large puddle near to which he lived. The number of safe-conducts on returning to the king's peace is very large. Any one might be able to make a most interesting list of those who had been adherents of Louis of France and the barons from the documents here registered. We trust if this be ever done the names will be, so far as is possible, arranged under counties. We shall then in some degree be able to estimate to what extent the manifold injustices of the previous reign had moved men to fight for their liberties. We believe the tyranny had been far more crushing in some parts of the country than in others.

There is not so much regarding the action of the Pope in this country as we should have expected. We have, however, in 1217 a notice of the Papal absolution of the lords who had been in rebellion, conveyed through the hands of the Bishop of Chichester, and we also find a letter from Henry, dated 16 October, 1220, thanking the Pope for good offices in his behalf.

In the index, under ' Castles,' there is a long list of fortresses in the king's hands or fortified by him, which will be of frequent use to those studying the disturbed time to which this volume relates.

We must call special attention to the following notices :

ON all communications must be written the name and address of the sender, not necessarily for pub- lication, but as a guarantee of good faith.

WE cannot undertake to answer queries privately.

To secure insertion of communications corre- spondents must observe the following rules. Let each note, query, or reply be written on a separate slip of paper, with the signature of the writer and such address as he wishes to appear. When answer- ing queries, or making notes with regard to previous entries in the paper, contributors are requested to put in parentheses, immediately after the exact heading, the series, volume, and page or pages to which they refer. Correspondents who repeat queries are requested to head the second com- munication " Duplicate."

E. H. Y. The lines you send

A cottage he saw, with a double coach-house,

Full of ton, full of taste, and gentility :

And the Devil he smiled, for his favourite vice

Is the pride that apes humility are a sad hash of a quatrain in ' The Devil's Drive,' by Coleridge and Southey, to be found in most editions of the works of these poets.

S. H. ("Mit Dummheit," &c.). From Schiller, ' Jungfrau von Orleans,' III. vi., though not quite correctly quoted.

NOTICE.

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