2»-J S. N« 64., Mar. 21. '57.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 



231 



stance of a chequer-wrought cloth having for- 

 merly covered the table of the court can have 

 given a name to that very important judicial tri- 

 bunal, and (the court having been founded by or 

 coeval with William the Conqueror) that that 

 name can have been retained during the long and 

 eventful period of eight centuries ? If its name 

 really is attributable to this remarkable incident, 

 perhaps some of your readers may be able to 

 unveil the mystery of the chequered table-cloth. 

 Was it placed there casually, or as a symbol of 

 the institution of the court ? In short, for what 

 particular, special, or general purpose, and by 

 whom was it so designedly and methodically con- 

 trived ? Henht Godwin. 



(Whatever doubts our correspondent maj' entertain 

 1 probably be solved by the following extract from 

 Foss's Lives of the Judges, i. 21.: — "It was sometimes 

 called Curia Regis ad Scaccarium ; and its name was de- 

 rived from the table at which it sat, which was 'a four- 

 cornered board, about ten feet long and five feet broad, 

 fitted in manner of a table to sit about, on every side 

 whereof is a standing ledge or border, four fingers broad. 

 LTpon this board is laid a cloth bought in Easter Term, 

 which is of black colour, rowed with strekes, distant 

 about a foot or span, like a chess-board. On the spaces 

 of this Scaccarium, or chequered cloth, counters were 

 ranged, with denoting marks, for checking the compu- 

 tations.' " 



Pretended Clergymen. — 



" Some days since it was stated, on the authority of the 

 Archbishop of Canterbury, and other prelates assembled 

 in Convocation, that a person not in holy orders had been 

 ofiiciating at Stanton le Hope, Essex, as a clergyman, and 

 with that statement appeared a caution, published by the 

 rector of that parish, in reference to a Mr. Hamilton, the 

 person alluded to. Mr. Hamilton represented that he was 

 ordained by the Bishop of Chichester, and that he was 

 chaplain to Lord Cottenham." 



The above having appeared in several of the 

 newspapers, and as I understand that though I am 

 a layman, I may, if I am churchwarden at the 

 time of the death of the incumbent, be called upon 

 to find a proper person to Uo the duty during the 

 time the living is vacant, I shall be obliged to any 

 of your correspondents who will tell me by what 

 token I may satisfy myself that a stranger is really 

 an ordained minister of the Church of England, 

 and not a practitioner of the Hamiltonian system. 



Vrtan Rheged. 



[According to Canon .50., churchwardens may refuse 

 the admission of strange preachers into the pulpit till 

 their " letters of orders " are produced, after which their 

 authority ceases. See Prideaux's Churchwardens' Guide. 

 edit. 1855, p. 285.] 



Wraxall. — In the preface to his Historical 

 Memoirs (2 vols. 8vo., 1815,) Wraxall says: 



" It is my intention, in continuation of the present 

 work, to publish the third part of these Memoirs, which 

 circumscribes the full space of five years, from 25 March, 

 J784, to April 1780." ^ ' 



Was this promised continuation published ? 



Chables Wylie. 



[There was subsequently published a continuation of 

 Wraxall's Memoirs of my Own Time, under the title of 

 Posthumous Memoirs of his Own Tim£, 3 vols. 8vo. 1836-7, 

 commencing with April, 1784, and ending March 9, 1789.] 



TIME OF TEAR WHEN OUR SAVIOUR WAS BORN. 



In 2"'» S. iii. 96. Mr. E. S. Taylor cites notes 

 from Alford's Greek Test., in which our Saviour's 

 birth is assumed to have been in a.xj.c. 747, and 

 the star which guided the Magi to have been a 

 conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. 



The notes cited adopt the theory of Winer, — 

 Real Worterbuch, under " Stern der Weisen;" 

 but the first person who suggested that a.u.c. 747 

 must have been the year of the nativity was 

 Kepler, at the close of the sixteenth century. 

 That singular man was so clever as to have pre- 

 pared more than one important step for Newton's 

 wonderful advances in science ; and so foolish as 

 to trust in a system of astrology of his own de- 

 vising, and to believe that our earth is a huge 

 sentient animal, " not like a dog," says he, " ex- 

 cited by every nod, but more like an elephant, 

 slow to become angry, and so much the more 

 furious when incensed." According to his astro- 

 logy, " when the rays of the planets form harmo- 

 nious configurations," the earth is disposed to beat 

 time, as it were ; and " the faculty of the vital 

 soul, in sublunary natures, associating its opera- 

 tion with the celestial harmonies," disposes all to 

 union in great efforts. (Kepler's "Life," ch. vii. 

 Lib. of Useful Knowledge.) With this fancy as 

 his stimulant, and with his valuably indefatigable 

 industry in calculating the planetary motions, he 

 set to work in search of some harmonious con- 

 figuration, to suit his notion of what must have 

 ushered in the gospel ; and finding that there were 

 three conspicuous conjunctions of Jupiter and 

 Saturn in 747, he unhesitatingly assumed that he 

 had thus found out the year of the nativity, and 

 that the Magi must have been astrologers, whose 

 science led them to travel in quest of the great 

 king ; whose birth was indicated to them by this 

 planetary phenomenon. 



To unscientific readers the word conjunction 

 may seem to imply that the two planets were 

 brought so close together as to seem but one star ; 

 in which case the nearer would hide the more 

 remote, instead of gaining an accession of " sur- 

 passing brightness." But, in fact, a conjunction 

 of two planets means no more than that the same 

 great circle of declination would pass through the 

 apparent place of each. There has been very re- 

 cently a more beautifully conspicuous conjunction 

 of Vepus and Jupiter adorning the sky ; yet the 



