Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/212

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

. ix. MARCH is, 1902.

for, strange to say, it seems to have almos completely dropped out of common speech fo at least fifty years before it became the sub ject of Bacon's note. I have been unable t< find it in any part of the writings of Peele Greene, Marlowe, or other poets and drama tists of the same or an earlier period. Bacon and men of his acquaintance and scholars like Gabriel Harvey use it frequently. Shake speare, on the other hand, uses " real " and its variants only five times, whereas Beaumon and Fletcher in twenty plays employ it eigh times, and Ben Jonson twenty-three. I cai quote sixty-nine passages from Bacon's work in which the word occurs, and have no doub if I were to go over all his work I coulc find it many times more. Now if Bacor wrote the Shakespeare plays why is it thai we find " real " so seldom in them ? See how much closer Ben Jonson is to Bacon in his vocabulary than Shakespeare. The wore does not occur in Shakespeare in any work that is known to have been written earliei that 1598, whereas it is a common word in Bacon before that time. C. CRAWFORD. 53, Hampden Road, Hornsey, N. (To be continued.)

RICHARD ARGENTINE, ALIAS SEXTEN. In the account of this "physician and divine" in the ' D.N.B.,' vol. ii. p. 80, it is stated that "in January, 1563/4, he appears to have been living at Exeter, but the statement that he was a prebendary of Exeter and Wells is without foun- dation."

This statement can scarcely be regarded as strictly accurate, for, according to the Com- position Books at the Record Office, Richard Argentine, clericus, compounded for the first- fruits of one of twenty -four prebends in Exeter Cathedral on 20 March, 4 Eliz. (1561/2). A cleric of the same name compounded in respect of Stokeleigh Poraeroy rectory, Devon on 16 February, 4 Eliz. (1561/2), and of Stoke

7i ?2X ng rector 3 7 > D evon, on 1 August, 5 Eliz. (looo).

Argentine's career starts in the 'Dictionary' with his going to Ipswich "in a serving-man's coat, and becoming "successively usher and master of the grammar school" there He perhaps was the native of Milton, Dorset, who under the name of Richard Sexten, or

SSmi'- uf m. 8ch J? r at Winchester in 1524 (Kirby),and was Fellow of New College Oxford 1528-38 M.A. 1536 (Foster, 'Alumni Oxon.). According to an old marginal note against his name in the Winchester CoHege register this Sexten became doctor of me!

Under Ster ^Podidascalus Tat 1 am ignorant, however, of the

reasons why writers have stated that Richard Argentine was "alias Sexten" (see Tanner, Cooper, 'Athense Cantab.,' i. 275), and should be glad of information upon the point.
 * Bibliotheca Britannico - Hibernica,' 48 ;

According to the 'Dictionary' Argentine was rector of St. Helen's, Ipswich, 1556-68. The index to the Composition Books men- tions no composition in respect of this rectory intermediate between that by William Baker on 29 September, 1554, and that by William Burges on 15 June, 1570. Perhaps some Ipswich correspondent may be able to throw further light on Argentine's connexion with this rectory. H. C.

'THE CAMBRIDGE CONFESSOE.' In 18363 there appeared at Cambridge (printed for [. Stevenson, Trinity Street, and J. Fraser, Regent Street, London) the first and only number of the Cambridge Confessor; or, ike Guide to the, Church, which was apparently intended to rival the ' Tracts for the Times,' then in course of publication at Oxford. It is stated in the introduction, which is dated 6 May, 1836, that the publication would appear monthly during term, arid that the contents would be " partly original and partly selected." The sub-title of the first number is 'The Claims of the Catholic Church on the Love and Reverence of the Faithful,' 12 pp. 8vo, and it bears a close resemblance to its Oxford prototype. I believe that the publication stopped at the first number on account of the small support which the venture received, though in point of quality Tracts for the Times.' The title was some- what unfortunate, as it suggested auricular onfession, and so cast suspicion on the
 * he number is at least equal to some of the

hole thing. Amongst those who were con- lected with the publication was the late lev. Henry Goldsmith Vignes, vicar of Sun- bury from 1842 to 1895, or thereabouts. I ma told by a son of Mr. Vignes that a Mr. Duller Maitland was also interested in the Cambridge Confessor. This I take to be

illiam Fuller Maitland, Esq., of Stansted, issex, who died in 1876, and was well known LS a collector of pictures.

Perhaps these few facts relating to an nterpiise which might have achieved great esults may be worth recording in your pages

R, B. P.

" WAGUES." This word, employed as the quivalent of the stangs or single-trees used o assist in the propulsion of the rush-cart, is f great interest, if only on account of its bsolescence. It had a derivative waguers, meaning the men who pushed at the wagues, i