2"^ S. No 88., Sept. 5. '57.] 



NOTES AND QUEEIES. 



187 



In another manor in the same parish, if a widow marries 

 without having put her finger into a hole in a certain 

 post, and there craved the consent of the Lords of the 

 Manor, she forfeits her estate." 



CUTHBERT BeDE, B.A. 



Vanhrugh Family. — Here are three notes re- 

 ferring to the family of the celebrated Sir John : 

 they may assist those readers interested in his 

 career : — 



« June 29*, 1721, Charles Vanbrugh of S' Martin in 

 y« fields, and Ann Burt of y« same, married by D^ Hough, 

 rector of S' George's." — Register of Trinity Chapel, 

 Knightshridge. 



" April 26, Lady Vanbrugh, aged 90, relict of the 

 celebrated Sir John Vanbrugh." — London and County 

 Magazine (Obituary), 1776, p. 279. 



"At his house, in Brook- street, Bath, Edward Vanbrugh, 

 esq., an immediate descendant of the celebrated Sir John 

 V." — Obituary in Gent.'s Mag., 1802, p. 1065. 



H. C. D. 



"Parso7i."' — My opinion of the merits of the 

 Imperial Dictionary was very much lowered the 

 other day by finding that the editor not only 

 gives a new derivation to this word, but also ut- 

 terly ignores the old derivation and meaning 

 which is given by Spelman, Blackstone, &c., and 

 which certainly to ordinary readers seems more 

 satisfactory than pfar?-her7', of which the Imperial 

 Dictionary itself confesses not to know the 

 origin : — 



" A parson, persona ecclesiw, is one that hath full pos- 

 session of all the rights of a parochial church. He is 

 called parson, persona, because by his person the Church, 

 which is an invisible body, is represented," &c. — Black- 

 stoned Comm., book i. chap. ii. 



In a letter from Queen Elizabeth to King James 

 (Camd. Soc. edit., p. 28.), we meet with parson, 

 where it undoubtedly means person : — 



" Determining with myselfe to sende you some one of 

 whose affection 1 had profe towarde your estat and 

 parson." 



So obvious a derivation should surely have been 

 alluded to, even though the editor, Scotch or 

 American, might have his own national * or eccle- 

 siastical reasons for rejecting it. J. Eastwood. 



Eckington. 



Hyde Park in 1654. — 



" It is sayd on all handes y* M" Garrard is very shortly 

 to marry her old servant M"" Heveningham, whose son, 

 they say, died about f ■"» of a yeare since, and that is his 

 incentive to marriage ; all y' family is very well, as their 

 freq* being in Hyde parke doth verifie, where stil also I 

 see M''' Bard's faire eyes. Yesterday each coach (& I be- 

 lieve there were 1500) payd 2s. 6d. and each horse Is. 

 but y* benefit accrewes to a brace of cittizens who have 

 taken y" herbage of y® parke of M^ Deane, to v/"^^ they 

 adde this excise of beauty : there was a hurlinge in y» 

 paddocke- course by Cornish gentlemen for y* greate 



* It reminds one, I hardly know why, of Dr. Johnson's 

 not being able to keep his national prejudices out of his 

 Dictionary. Vide Oats, &c. 



solemnity of y daye, wo'* indeed (to use my Lord pro- 

 tectors word) was great : when my Lord protectors coach 

 came into y» parke w"» Col. Ingoldsby and my lord's 

 daughters onely (3 of them all in greene-a) the coaches 

 and horses flock'd about them like some miracle, but 

 they galloped (after y" mode court -pace now, and w"'' 

 they all use where ever they goe) round and round y° 

 parke, and all y' great multitude hunted them and caught 

 them still at y« tume like a hare, and then made a Lane 

 w"> all reverent hast for them, and soe after them againe, 

 that I never saw y« like in my life." 



******* 

 [" Letter of J. B. '{John Barber ?) to Mr. Scudamore, 

 dated London, 2 Maij, 1654."] 



Cl. Hopper. 



Sir William Dolben. — Mr. Foss may feel in- 

 terested in the following quotation from a letter 

 written January 25, 1693, by Roger Comber- 

 bach, recorder of Chester. Hailing from the 

 Inner Temple, he informs his correspondent, the 

 royalist Colonel Eoger Whitley, then mayor of 

 Chester, that — 



" Sir William Dolben, Second Justice of the King's 

 Bench, dj'cd suddenly this morning, when he had just 

 put on his robes, and was about to go to Court. He was 

 a Judge of great integrity." 



T. Hughes. 



Chester. 



©iicrtpS. 



THE ULTIMA THtTLE OF THE LATIN WRITERS : 

 WHERE WAS IT ? 



The following from the columns of the Dorset 

 Comity Chronicle may, perhaps, deserve preserva- 

 tion by translation to those of " N. & Q. : " 



" Some Eoman writers, and especially some of the 

 poets, spoke of a remote land, seemingly an island, under 

 the name of Thule. It was the farthermost land.* It 

 was west of Italy or Europe.f It was thought to be far 

 from the torrid zone, in a climate dark as to daylight or 

 cloudy skies I; and it was deemed a place almost, or 

 quite, without the circle of civilisation. § Procopius 

 thought that it was Jutland or Scandia (Norway and 

 Sweden), which is neither ultima, the last land in a line 

 from Italy, nor westward of Europe. Pythea of Mar- 

 seilles took it to be somewhere north of Britain, in a 

 place which would answer to that of Ireland ; and Ptolemy 

 thought it was near Britain, hardly two days' sail from it, 

 and thence some commentators have taken it to be the 

 Orkneys, and others the Shetland Islands, which they 

 say are called by the sailors Thylensel; while others 

 again believe Tilemark in Norway to be the Ultima 

 Thule, though ultima clearly it is not. But the writer of 

 the Drych y pryf oesoedd, or ' Mirror of the Early Ages,' 

 a British history of great name, in the Welsh language, 

 says : ' There has been no little disputation as to what 

 land is meant by the one which the old sailors called 

 Thule, but if they had known Welsh there would have 

 been no contention or disputation in the case; for in 



* " Tibi serviat ultima Thule." — Virg., Georg. i. 30. 

 t " Hesperias vada caligantia Thules." — Stat. 4. 

 % " Nigrae littora Thules." — Stat. 4. 

 § "De conducendo loquitur jam Ketore Thule." — 

 Juven,, 15. 



