374 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2°'i S. VIII. Nov. 6. '59^ 



Sun Dial Inscription. — Over the porch of Mil- 

 ton church, Berks, 1859, is the following inscrip- 

 tion : — 



" Our Life's a flying Shadow, God's the Pole, 

 Death, the Horizon, where our sun is set ; 

 The Index, pointing at him, is our Soul, 



Which will through Christ a Resurrection get." 



W. J. Bern HARD Smith. 



Temple. 



HOOP rETTICOATS AKD CRIKOLINE. 



In the desultory reading of a dusty volume I, 

 came across the following — at this period inter- 

 esting subject — in a scarce book, entitled "The 

 London Tradesman. Being a compendious View of 

 all the Trades, Professions, Arts, both Liberal and 

 Mechanic, now practised in the Cities of London 

 and Westminster. Calculated for the Information 

 of Parents, and Instruction of Youth in their choice 

 of Business," by R. Campbell, Esq. London, 1747. 

 In these days of crinoline and hoop-petticoats, the 

 fair readers of " N. & Q." will be amused to see 

 the doings of their great-grandmothers therein 

 embalmed : — 



« Of the Hoop- Petti- Coat- Maker. 



"If I am not mistaken I placed the Hoop -Petticoat- 

 Maker as an Article in the Milliner's Branch ; but, upon 

 Kecolleetion, I chuse to afford this seven-fold Fence a 

 Section bj' itself, since I am bound to do Honour to 

 every thing that concerns the Fair ; and if I had lumped 

 it with the rest of their Wardrobe, I might be suspected 

 an Enemy to this Female Entrenchment. The Materials 

 are striped Holland, Silk, or Check, according to the 

 Quality of the Fair ; to be inclosed, and supported with 

 rows of Whale-Bone, or Rattan. 



" When this ingenious Contrivance came in Fashion 

 has much perplexed the learned : some will have it that 

 Semiramis wore one of them in her famous Expedition, 

 and some other Antiquaries will have us believe the 

 Queen of Sheba was dressed in one full five yards in cir- 

 cumference at her first Interview with Solomon. How 

 these Accounts are attested I leave to the Learned World 

 to settle ; it is sufficient for us to know, that by some 

 unlucky Accident they came in Disuse, and were revived 

 again about the Middle of the last Century. They first 

 appeared under the Denomination of Farthingales, and 

 were less in their Dimensions; but they now seem to 

 have arrived at their perfect State, and, like all other 

 sublunar)' Things, begin to decrease in Bulk. As to their 

 Use, I dare not divulge the Secrets of the Fair; they 

 have kept it inviolably, nay, better than we have kept 

 the Free- Mason's Sign; for I defj' all the Male Creation 

 to discover the secret Use the Ladies designed them for. 

 Some apparent Advantages flow from them, which every 

 one ma}- see, but they have a cabalistical Meaning, which 

 none but such as are within the Circle can fathom. We 

 see they are Friends of Men, for they have let us into 

 all the Secrets of the Ladies' Legs, which we might have 

 been ignorant of to Eternity without their Help; they 

 discover to us indeed a Sample of what we wish to pur- 

 chase, yet serve as a Fence to keep us at an awful Dis- 

 tance. They encourage the Consumption of our Manu- 

 factures in a prodigious Degree, and the great Demand 

 we have fpr Whale-Bone renders them truly beneficial to 



our good Allies the Dutch ; in short, they are a publie 

 Good, and as such I recommend them. 



"They are chiefly' made b}' Women : They must not. 

 be polluted by the unhallowed Hands of a rude Male. 

 These Women make a tolerable Living bj' it. The Work 

 is harder than most Needle- Work, and requires Girls of 

 Strength. A Mistress must have a pretty kind of Genius 

 to make them sit well, and adjust them to the reigning- 

 mode ; but in the main, it is not necessary she should bs; 

 a witch. 



" Since I am so bold as to make free with the Ladies* 

 Hoop-Petticoat, I must just peep under the Quilted Pet- 

 ticoat. Every one knows the Materials they are made 

 of: Thpy are made mostly by Women, and some Men» 

 who are employed by the Shops, and earn but Little. 

 They quilt likewise Quilts for Beds for the Upholder, 

 This they make more of than of the Petticoats, but 

 not very considerable, nothing to get rich bj', unless 

 they are able to purchase the Materials, and sell them 

 finished to the shops, which few of them do. They rarely 

 take Apprentices, and the Women they employ to help 

 them, earn Three or Four Shillings a Week and their 

 Diet." 



Luke Limne«. 



Regent's Park. 



THE EPITAPH OF DEAN NOWELt, AND IMPORT 

 or THE CONTRACTION " I." 



On the monument of Alexander Nowell, Dean 

 of St. Paul's, formerly in the old cathedral, whicli 

 is engraved in Dugdale's St. Paul's, and copied in 

 Churton's Life of Novsell, at p. 366., was a long 

 Latin inscription, two of the clauses of which are 

 as follow : — 



" Marianis temporibus propter Christum exulanti : 

 Reducum, i. uere Religionis, contra Anglo-papistas duo- 

 bus libris assertori." 



In the latter of which an abbreviation, not I 

 believe very uncommon, has strangely puzzled, at 

 distant intervals of time, the biographers of that 

 patriarchal survivor of the English Reformers. 

 Donald Lupton, in his History of the Modern 

 Protestant Divines, printed in 1637, asserted that 

 Nowell was " the first that returned from foreign, 

 parts," — a statement which Archdeacon Churton 

 took the trouble to disprove (Life of Nowell, 1809, 

 p. 37.) ; and perceiving that it was derived from 

 a misapprehension of the epitaph, added in a 

 note : — 



" I suspect ' reducum i, ' which is certainly a blander, 

 and probably ought to be ' reduci,' was read * reducum 

 primo,' and of course translated ' the first of those that 

 returned.' " 



Again, when explaining and commenting on 

 the epitaph in p. 366., Archdeacon Churton says : 



" ' Reducum i.' This seems to be at once the error and 

 correction, and, as conjectured, p. 37. n., ought probably 

 to have been ' reduci.' " 



It is surprising that Archdeacon Churton, as- 

 sisted as he was by the learned Dr. T. D. Whita- 

 ker, should have betrayed this ignorance of an 

 abbreviation whiph I have certainly often seen — 



