514 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2nd s. N" 104., Deo. 26. '67. 



them that hit j's but a leasse of a benefice im proper! te, 

 with other small tenanderj'se. They say all they durste 

 not say hym nay: and the priores saith plainely that she 

 never "wofde consent therto. This was done sens Michael- 

 mas. To call my Lord Mordant to make answere thus by 

 power and myght in his contrey to use bowses of religion 

 of the Kinges foundation (me semith), ye can do no less 

 by your offes, unleste ye will suffer the Kinges founda- 

 tions in continewaunce by every man to be abusede." 



This is an extract from a letter of Dr. Layton 

 to Thomas Cromwell, the King's Vicar- General, 

 in the Letters 7-elating to the Suppression of the 

 Monasteries, p. 92., printed for the Camden So- 

 ciety in 1843. I very much wish to know whe- 

 ther by Harwolde is meant the village now called 

 Harrold, on the banks of the Ouse, in the county 

 of Bedford. Lord Mordant, who dwelt " nygh 

 the saide howse," was, I presume, the proprietor 

 of the manor of Turvey in that neighbourhood, 

 and ancestor of the Earls of Peterborough, whose 

 monuments are still existing in the chancel of the 

 beautiful church there. Oxoniensis. 



P.S. Was the LordMordaunt ever called to ac- 

 count for this proceeding ? 



[Harwolde, now spelt Harrold, is one and the same 

 place. It is a market town and parish in the Hundred of 

 VVilley, on the banks of the river Ouse. See Lewis's 

 Topog. Diet, and Lysons's Beds., p. 91.] 



3RfpUp^. 



THE ISLANDS OF SCANDINAVIA AND THULE. 



* (2"'^ S. iv. 389.) 



Polybius, writing about the year 150 b.c, in- 

 forms his readers that the world, as known in his 

 time, was divided into three parts, distinguished 

 by the three denominations of Asia, Libya or 

 Africa, and Europe. The boundaries of these 

 were, the Tanais (or Don), the Nile, and the 

 Pillars of Hercules. Everything between the 

 Tanais and the Nile was Asia; everything be- 

 tween the Nile and the Pillars of Hercules was 

 Africa ; everything between the Pillars of Her- 

 cules and the Tanais was Europe. The country 

 extending from Narbo in Gaul (Narbonne, on 

 the west of the Gulf of Lyons), along the Medi- 

 terranean, in the direction of the Pillars of Her- 

 cules, is, he says, called Iberia : that part of the 

 same region which borders on the Great Sea (the 

 Atlantic) has received no general appellation, on 

 account of the recent date of its discovery ; it is 

 inhabited by large barbarous nations. He then 



Eroceeds to remark that as, up to his time, no one 

 ad been able to determine whether the space 

 lying to the south of the ^Ethiopian confine of 

 Asia and Africa is land or sea, so they were 

 still in ignorance as to the country lying to the 

 north of the interval between the river Tanais 

 and the city of Narbo ; and he declares that any 



person who pretends to describe that part of 

 Europe is a mere impostor (iii. 38.). 



This passage may be taken as decisive with re- 

 spect to the geographical knowledge of Northern 

 Europe possessed by the best informed Greeks 

 and Romans, about the . middle of the second 

 century before Christ, fifty years before the 

 birth of Julius Caesar. Rumours respecting the 

 islands from which the Phoenicians brought tin, 

 but no certain knowledge of them, had reached 

 the Greeks in the time of Herodotus (iii. 115.). 

 Pytheas affirmed that he landed in Britain (Strab., 

 ii. 4. 1.); and Timseus, the historian (who died 

 about 256 b.c), is reported to have said that tin 

 was brought from the island of Mictis, six days' 

 sail from the same country (Fragm. 32. edition 

 C. Miiller). Polybius mentions the Britannic 

 Islands, and their production of tin (iii. 57.) ; and 

 his continuatoi", Posidonius, who was born about 

 135 B.C., stated that tin was found among the 

 barbarians who dwelt beyond Lusitania, as well 

 as in the islands of the Cassiterides, and that it 

 was brought from the Britannic Islands to Mas- 

 silia (Fragm. 48. edit. C. Miiller). It should be 

 observed, that the notice of the Britannic Islands 

 attributed to Aristotle, occurs, not in his genuine 

 works, 'but in the spurious treatise De Mundo, 

 which is a late production (c. 3. p. 393. edit. 

 Bekker).* 



The campaigns of C^sar opened Gaul and Bri- 

 tain to the Romans ; and after a time, their know- 

 ledge extended to northern Germany and the 

 Scandinavian peninsula, which, however, they sup- 

 posed to be an island. The German Ocean was 

 first navigated by Drusus ; who, in 12 b.c, reached 

 the sea by the Hhine, and landed on the coast of 

 Friesland (Tac. Germ., 34. ; Merivale's Romans 

 under the Empire, vol. iv. p. 229.). Sixteen years 

 afterwards (4 a.d.), Tiberius sent a flotilla down 

 the Rhine, with orders to follow the coast east- 

 wards, and to sail up the Elbe, until he effected a 

 junction by his land forces with his naval arma- 

 ment. This junction — a military enterprise of 

 great difficulty at that time — was successfully ac- 

 complished, and is celebrated with merited praises 

 by Velleius, who speaks of this fleet sailing tO' 

 the Elbe through a sea previously unknown and 

 unheard of (ii.'l06., Merivale, lb., p. 309.). 



Strabo declares that all the region beyond the 

 Elbe, adjoining the ocean, was unknown in his 

 time. " No one" (he adds) " is recorded to have 

 navigated along this coast eastward as far as the 

 mouths of the Caspian Sea ; the Romans have not 



* Three hypotheses concerning the Aristotelic treatise 

 Trepi Kd<7|ixov : — 1. That it is a Greek version of a Latin 

 work by Apuleius ; 2. That it is a work of Posidonius ; 

 3. That it is a work of Chrysippus ; are stated by Bran- 

 dis {Aristoteks, vol. i. p. 12''0.) to have been conclusively 

 refuted hy Spengel. Brandis considers the authorship 

 and date of this spurious treatise to be still undetermined. 



