April 3. 1852.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



321 



as Muggleton was. Can Mr. B. have confounded 

 Muggleton with Huntington ? A. N. 



Puritan Antipathy to Custard. — Can any of your 

 readers inform me why " custard " was held in 

 such abomination by the Puritans ? — See Kens 

 Life, by W. L. Bowles, vol. i. p. 143. W. N. 



" Corruptio Optimi,'''' Sfc. — To what source is 

 the well-known saying, " Corruptio optimi fit 

 pessima," to be traced ? Hs. 



Miss Fansliawe's Enigma. — The enigma of Miss 

 Catherine Fanshawe on the letter " H" is so good, 

 as to make me wish much to see the other by the 

 same lady, to which E. H. Y. refers in your Num- 

 ber of Vol. v., p. 258. If E. H. Y. could procure a 

 copy, and send it to you for publication, he would 

 probably oblige many besides E. S. S. W. 



Winton. 



Mary Amhree. — Is there any good account (not 

 scattered notices) of Mary Ambree ? 

 " That Mary Amhree 

 Who marched so free 

 To the siege of Gaunt, 

 And death could not daunt, 

 As the ballad doth vaunt?" 



Edward F. Rimbault. 



Alitor iShvLttiti StiT^tocrcU. 



Sir W. Stanley. — I find in one of the usual 

 history books in use that Sir William Stanley, who 

 was beheaded for high treason, for saying " If 

 Perkin Wabbeck is son of Edward IV"., I will 

 supply him with five hundred men," was executed 

 in tlie third year of Henry VI£. Now, in a me- 

 morandum of the time in a Horce B. Virg. in my 

 possession, it states : 



" iMenoorandum : Quod die lune xvl° die Februarii 

 anno Regis Henrici Septimi Decimo Willius Stanley, 

 Miles, Camerarius regis praedicti receptus fuit apud 

 Turrim London, et ductus usque scaffold ct Ibidem fuit 

 decapitatus. Johannes Warner et Nicholas Allwyn 

 tunc vie. London." 



Could you help me to the true account ? 



John C. Jackson. 

 Cross House, Ilminster, Somerset. 



[The memorandum in the i/or^ agrees with the date 

 given in Fabyan's Chronicle, p. 685., edit. 1811, viz. 

 February 16, 1495. Fuller, in his Worthies, also states 

 that Allwyn and Warner were sheriH's of London in the 

 tenth year of Henry VIL] 



Mires — Somerlayes. — In the appointment of a 

 pinder for the town of Hunstanton, Norfolk, 

 dated 1644, these two words occur : " No person 

 shall feed any mires with any beast," &c. Mire is 

 clearly the same as meer, i. e. the strip of un- 

 ploughed ground bounding adjacent fields. "None 



shall tye any of their cattle upon anothers somer- 

 layes without leave of the owner," &c. I suppose 

 somerlaye to be the same as somerland, explained 

 by Halliwell to mean, land lying fallow during 

 summer. I find neither word in Forby's Glos- 

 sary. C. W. G. 



[Grass laid down for summer pasture, is called in 

 Kent, lay fields ; doubtless somerlayes are such. Pro- 

 bably a corruption of lea, the lesura of Latin charters.} 



Wyned. — In an old precedent (seventeenth 

 century) of a lense of a house, I find the words 

 " divers parcels of loyncd waynescott windowes and 

 other implements of household." What is wyned? 



C. W. G. 



[A friend, who is extremely well versed in early 

 records, and to whom we referred tliis Query, observes, 

 " I have never met with the word, nor can I find a 

 trace of it anywhere. I suspect that the querist has 

 misread his MS., and that, in the original, it is pay ned, 

 for parted. In the slovenly writing of that period many 

 a form of pa might be mistaken for w. The upstroke 

 of the p is often driven high. I have seen many a pa 

 like this instance."] 



Cromwell Family. — Two leaves, paged from 

 243 to 246, cuttings from an old magazine, seem- 

 ingly having dates down to 1772, entitled "Ac- 

 count of the Male Descendants of Oliver Cromwell. 

 By the Rev. Mr. Hewling Luson, of Lowestoft, 

 in Suffolk. In a Letter to Dr. Brooke." [Con- 

 cluded from our last, page 197.] The next article 

 commencing, " On the Knowledge of Mankind. 

 From Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son," 

 having lately come into my hands, I shall feel 

 greatly obliged by being informed through " N. & 

 Q.," or otherwise, where may I meet with the 

 previous part of such account of the Cromwell 

 family, or the title and date of such magazine ? 



W. P. A. 



[Mr. Luson's letter to Dr. Brooke, referred to by 

 our correspondent, will be found in Hughes's Letters, 

 edited by Buncombe, vol. ii. Appendix, p. xxxii. 

 edit. 1773.] 



Beholden. — Is the word "beholden" a cor- 

 ruption of the Dutch " gehonden," or is it a past 

 participle from the verb "to behold?" If the 

 latter, how comes it from signifying " seen," to 

 denote " indebted " ? A. F. S. 



[If our correspondent had referred to Richardson's 

 Dictionary, his difficulty would have been removed on- 

 reading this derivation and definition ; 



" Aiigl- Saxon, Be-hoaldan, Be-haldan, Healdan. 

 Dutch, Behouden, tenere, servare, ol)servare. To 

 keep or hold {sc. the eye fixed upon any object), to look 

 at it, to observe, to consider."] 



Men of Kent and Kentish Men. — The natives of 

 Kent are often spoken of in these different terms. 

 Will you be so good as to inform me what is the 



