Sept. 2. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



195 



for the mansion, called Hall O'Wood, in Balterley, 

 remained in possession of the Woods for two cen- 

 turies after the Chief Justice's death. I forget 

 whether Berry gives the arms, but Cbstriensis 

 can easily refer to the book. Edwaed Foss. 



Pedigree of the Time of Alfred (Vol. viii., 

 p. 586.). — Mr. Fox was holding forth one day on 

 the hustings in Covent Garden, about the " noble 

 house of Russell," when an adjacent figure of 

 an agricultural caste (broad-ribbed kerseys and 

 brown tops — but this no essential part of my 

 reply), exclaimed : " I wonder who ever heard 

 talk of the noble house of Russell three hundred 

 year ago?" Mr. Fox was so struck with this 

 interpellation, that, after the meeting, he inquired 

 into the status of the speaker ; and, I understand, 

 satisfied himself that he was a Wapshott, whose 

 ancestors had held (what is remarkable) common- 

 field land ; not, as Mr. M'Culloch appears to have 

 asserted, at Chertsey, but at Staines, at the period 

 of the Domesday Survey. The distance between 

 the two parishes is, however, trifling. In Domes- 

 day Book I must leave them. I cannot, I find, 

 accurately remember who told the anecdote : it 

 was post-prandial. 



Would not an imaginary conversation between 

 Wapshott and the present President of H, M.'s 

 council (the bagging of the brace of fat abbeys 

 not omitted) do for one more production of a cer- 

 tain " old tree ? "^; Zihgabo Belgbavehsis. 

 1 St. Kitts. 



Thomas Rolf (Vol. x., p. 103.). — The name of 

 Thomas Rolfe is mentioned in the Year Books 

 from Michaelmas, 8 Hen. IV., 1406. He was 

 summoned, with five others, to take upon him the 

 degree of Serjeant-at-Law in 3 Hen. V., 1415 ; 

 but all of them disobeying, they were called before 

 the Parliament in l^ovember, 1417, and charged 

 to take the degree under a great penalty. This 

 they accordingly did in the following Trinity 

 Term. In 1430 Rolfe, being summoned to take 

 upon himself ihe order of knighthood, pleaded 

 his privilege; that he was bound to attend the 

 Court of Common Pleas, and not elsewhere, and 

 thus saved his fine, which was probably the object 

 of his nomination. In 1431-2 he appears to have 

 been attorney to Cardinal Beaufort (Bymer, x. 

 500.) ; and died in 1439. Edwabd Foss. 



I am obliged to W. T. T. for the correction of 

 an error in my " List of Monumental Brasses." I 

 find I had altered the word "judge" to "ser- 

 jeant-at-law " in my own copy, and I have no 

 doubt, from the costume, that such was the rank. 



C. R. Manning. 



Sword-swallowivg amovg the Ancients (Vol. v., 

 p. 296.). — Your correspondent ^geotus will find 

 a^ very curious account of what appears to be 



sword-swallowing in the first book of Apuleius. 

 The passage, however, is somewhat obscure. A 

 boy is represented as dancing upon the part of the 

 sword which is left in sight. Henbt T. Rilet. 



»0TK8 ON BOOKS, KTC. 



Encouraged by the great sale of their edition of Foxe's 

 Acts and Monuments, Messrs. Seeley have undertaken to 

 publish a Series of the Church Historians of England; and, 

 warned by their former experience, have been careful to 

 secure the assistance of a competent editor. Three 

 volumes of the Pre-Keformation Series have been issued, 

 viz. Vol. I., Part II., containing I'he Historical Works of 

 the Venerable Bede ; Vol. II., Part I., The Saxon Chronicle 

 and Florence of Worcester ; and Vol. II., Part 11., con- 

 taining The Chronicle of Fabius JEthelwerd ; Asset's Annals 

 of Alfred; The Book of Hyde; The Chronicles of John 

 of Wallingford ; The History of Ingulf; and Gaitnar. 

 All these have been carefully translated and annotated 

 by the editor, the Eev. Joseph Stevenson, -who had 

 already given proof of his fitness for such a task by his 

 admirable labours on some of the publications of the 

 English Historical Society. And as be sets out with the 

 intention of giving, not the " opinions or doctrines of any 

 particular School or period of the English Church," but of 

 selecting each author simply as a chronicler of the eccle- 

 siastical events of his own day, there can be little doubt 

 that he will produce a series of volumes at once most 

 creditable to both editor and publisher, and most useful 

 to all who desire to study the History of the Church in 

 this country, and who, on the one hand, may not have 

 access to the Latin originals, or, on the other, may not be . 

 qualified to make use of them. 



"A marvellous discovery," says the Literary Gazette of 

 Saturday last, " is pompously annoimced by one of the 

 Paris newspapers — nothing less than the power of pro- 

 ducing instantaneously copies of engravings, lithographs, 

 and printed pages, with such minute exactitude, that the 

 most searching investigation, even by a microscope, can- 

 not distinguish them from the originals. The modvs 

 operandi is not described, and is, in fact, it is stated, kept 

 a profound secret by the inventor, who is a M. Boyer, of 

 Kimes: but it seems to resemble the operation of litho- 

 graphy. As a specimen of his art, M. Boyer is represented 

 to Lave produced, in less than a quarter of an hour, a re- 

 production of a sheet containing, 1. a page of a Latin 

 book, published in 1625 ; 2. a design from the Illustrated 

 London ^^ews of April, 1854; 8. a page from a recently 

 printed biography ; 4. a page of a book printed in 1503 ; 

 6. an engraving of the fa9ade of a palace ; 6. a specimen 

 of gothic characters. All these were, it is alleged, imi- 

 tated with such extraordinary minuteness, that neither 

 the eye nor the microscope could detect the difi'erence of 

 a letter, a line, or a spot between them and the originals. 

 A great number of copies can, we are told, be struck off 

 from the stone employed, and the expense is alleged to be 

 extremely small, 50 per cent, at least for printed works, 

 and more for engravings. If there be no exaggeration in 

 what is stated, M. Beyer's discovery will eflect an extra- 

 ordinary revolution in the printing and engraving pro- 

 fessions: with it neither print nor book can possibly be 

 protected from piracy. It is not denied that he has al- 

 ready produced fac-similes of rare old engravings and 

 books." Whatever may be the merits of M. Boyer's dis- 

 covery, it would appear to bear a striking resemblance to 

 the Anastatic process, which certainly has not yet led to 



