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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. ix. JUNB 21, 1902.

5. Mary Darcy, daughter and coheir,

married Semer, and had a daughter Alice,

cet. sixteen in 1414, who married Thomas de la More, and had a daughter Margaret, wife of Richard Hansard, of Wai worth Castle, co. Durham.

The ancient arms of the Hed worth family were On a bend three quatrefoils.

H. R. LEIGHTON.

EastBoldon, R.S.O., co. Durham.

'OLIVER AND ARTHUR' (9 th S. ix. 387). For a summary of the chief editions and versions of this old romance (the earliest in French, translated from Latin by Ph. Camus, is an incunabulum of 1482, and bears the title 'Le livre de Olivier de Castille et de Artus Dalgarbe, son tresroyal Compaignon ' ; the first translation of it into English, printed in London by W. de Worde, 1518, appeared under the title 'Y e Historye of Olyver of Castylle and the fayre Helayne') see Brunet's 'Manuel,' sub 'Olivier,' vol. iv. col. 183-5.

H. KREBS.

Oxford.

There is a note on the literary history of this romance in Dunlop's ' History of Prose Fiction,' edited by H. Wilson (London, 1888), vol. i. p. 318. WILLIAM E. A. AXON.

Manchester.

BLACK MALIBRAN (9 11 ; S. ix. 367, 390). If J may trust a very distant remembrance, there was a portrait of this black vocalist of negro race in the Illustrated London News nearly fifty years ago ; but what her real name was I cannot say. She was depicted as a very ugly woman, wearing a low dress, and accompanying herself on the guitar.

Madame Malibran de Beriot was born in Paris in 1808, died at Manchester in 1836, and was buried in the south aisle of the choir of the collegiate church, now the cathedral. The stone under which she had been laid was pointed out to me when a boy, some ten years afterwards. The body only rested there for a few months, when it was exhumed and taken to Brussels.

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

CURIOUS WORD-COINAGES (9 th S. ix. 347). " Retiral " has long been a recognized tech- nical term with reference to bank bills, re- ceiving in this connexion the attention of the lexicographer. Lately it has come to be commonly used in allusion to retirement from office. Two examples occurred in the Scottish newspapers, almost simultaneously, about the end of April and the beginning of May. The Chief Constable of Glasgow and

the Sheriff-Substitute of Dumbartonshire both retired, the former on the plea of failing health and the latter on account of advancing years. The newspapers of Glasgow and the county of Dumbarton appropriately referred to the " retiral " in each case.

THOMAS BAYNE.

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME (9 th S. ix. 387). Rolfe's ' Shakspere the Boy ' (Chatto & Windus) and Goadby's ' Eng- land of Shakspere ' (Cassell) are both inter- esting books, and may be found useful.

W. E. WILSON.

Hawick.

' Society in the Elizabethan Age,' by Hubert Hall, F.S.A., with eight coloured and other plates (Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1901).

HENRY GERALD HOPE.

119, Elms Road, Clapham, S.W.

HONORIFICABILITUDINITAS (9 th S. ix. 243,

371). It may interest PROF. BUTLER and MR. J. T. CURRY to learn that the first known appearance of the dative and ablative plural of this word in an Eng- lish work as it appears in * Love's Labour 's Lost' (1589-92, published 1598),Nash's 'Lenten Stuffe' (1599), and Marston's 'Dutch Courte- zan '(1605) is in a volume en titled 'TheCom- playntof Scotland,' published at St. Andrews in 1548 or 1549, and attributed to Sir John Inglis by some and to Robert Wedderburn by others. This volume, which is of extreme rarity, and was dedicated to Queen Mary, was reprinted in Edinburgh in 1801. In the " Prolog " to the reader, the author, in rail- ing at the use of long and out-of-the-way words by " diverse translatours and copilaris in aid tymys," gives as examples "Hermes, quilk pat in his verkis thir lang tailit vordis, conturbabatur, constantinopolitani, innu- merabilibus, solicitudinibus. There vas ane uthir that \vrit in his verkis, gaudet honorificabilitudini- tatibus," &c.

It would be interesting to discover who was this " uthir." This, however, was not the earliest use of the dative and ablative plural of the word, as it appeared in the ' Magnse Derivationes ' of Uguccione da Pisa, the standard Latin dictionary in Dante's time, and also in the ' Catholicon ' of Giovanni da Genova, one of the earliest of printed books.

GEORGE STRONACH. Edinburgh.

Your correspondents may be referred for information to the ' New English Dictionary ' (s.v. 'Honorificabilitudinity'); and, for amuse- ment, to Pearson's Magazine, December, 1897, pp. 653-4, and to a note by Mr. Paget Toynbee in Literature for 9 April, 1898, at p. 424, in