324 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 260. 



rape." In G. Woodfall's edition, published in 

 1814, and also in Bohn's edition of 1850, the full 

 name Bute is given; whereas the nobleman re- 

 ferred to was not Lord Bute, but Lord Baltimore*, 

 who, at the date of the letter, had recently been 

 tried for a rape, and escaped conviction by proving 

 the consent of his unfortunate victim. Eric. 



Canada. 



[In compliance with the wish expressed by our Trans- 

 atlantic correspondent, we insert the following extract 

 from Mr. Griffin's work, which is an ingenious, but, in our 

 opinion, an unsuccessful attempt to prove that Governor 

 Pownall was the writer of the Letters of Junius : 



" The decree or arret of the parliament of Paris, of the 

 6th of August, 1761, after detailing thirty-three different 

 •works, written by .Jesuits (and published under the 

 sanction of their order), as having been examined by 

 Commissioners of the Court, condemned twenty-four of 

 them, to be ' laceres et brules en la cour du Palais, au pied 

 du grand escalier d'icelui, par I'executeur de la haute 

 justice, comme seditieux, destructifs de tout principe de 

 la morale chretienne, enseignant une doctrine meurtrifere 

 «t abominable, non-seuleraent contre la surete de la vie 

 des citoyens, mais meme contre celle des personnes sacrees 

 -des souverains.' 



" Busembaum's Theologia Moralis, edited by Lacroix, — 

 •Suarez's Fidei Catholicw, — and Molina's De Justitia et 

 jure, were among the works examined, but only the first 

 and third were condemned to the flames ; the first being 

 moreover honoured by a special prohibition of its future 

 «ale or use. Suarez's work, as stated in the arret, had 

 Already been condemned to be burnt in 1614, the year of 

 its publication ; and, probably, the parliament therefore 

 ■deemed it unnecessary to repeat the condemnation. Be- 

 sides the condemnation of the books of sound casuistry, 

 the arret, at great length, forbade the further operations 

 •of the Jesuits, as teachers or professors, in the French 

 dominions, and decreed the closing of their colleges, 

 schools, &c. By the king's letters patent of the same 

 date, the execution of this arret was suspended for one 

 year ; and, on the last day of that year, namely, on the 

 6th of August, 1762, another Arret du Parlemenide Paris, 

 eoncemant les Jesuites, was passed, which — after recapitu- 

 lating the legislative and j udicial proceedings in France, 

 relative to the order of Jesuits, from the arret of the 29th 

 of December, 1594, and edict, based thereon, of Henri IV., 

 of the 7th of January following, which first banished the 

 Jesuits from the kingdom, — showed, among other things, 

 with wonderful minuteness, the grounds of the con- 

 demnation of the works of the Jesuits, and then confirmed 

 the arret of the 6th of August, in the preceding year, and 

 commanded its execution. At what precise date, after- 

 ward, the executeur de la haute justice fulfilled the par- 



[* This justice has already been done to Lord Bute 

 in one of those admirable articles on the Junius 

 question which appeared in The Athenceum of 1853, 

 page 734. And here we will take the opportunity of 

 repeating publicly an observation which we have often 

 heard privately — how desirable it is that these papers, 

 and others on Wilkes, Mason, &c., apparently from the 

 same hand, filled as they are with minute but "most inter- 

 esting facts, and exhibiting, as they do, a perfect fami- 

 liarity with the men and events of the eighteenth century, 

 should be reprinted in an accessible form. These Essays 

 FKOM. THE Atiien.eum would, we are sure, be welcome 

 to a very large class of readers, who have not the oppor- 

 tunity of wading in search of them through the volumes 

 in which they originally appeared. — Ed. " K & Q."] 



ticular duty assigned to him by the arret, we have failed 

 to discover. But the delay of' little more than a month 

 would have rendered it possible for such a person as 

 Governor Pownall to have visited Paris ; as, on the 4th 

 of September, 1762, the Duke of Bedford was appointed 

 Minister Plenipotentiary to His Most Christian Majesty, 

 and immediately departed to Paris, where he remained 

 until the object of his appointment had been attained, by 

 the signing of the preliminary treaty of peace, at Fon- 

 tainebleau, on the 3rd of November, and of the final one, 

 at Paris, on the 10th of February, in the follo\ving year ; 

 so that, if the burning of the books took place at any 

 time after the Duke's arrival in Paris, in the first week 

 of September, 1762, it is qute possible that Governor 

 Pownall, in his Grace's suite, or otherwise, may have 

 visited that city, and been present at the burning. In- 

 deed there is a strong probability that he did visit Paris 

 towards the close of the year ; as, very soon after the 

 signing of the preliminary treat}', the combined army in 

 Germany, under Prince Ferdinand, began to break up, 

 and the English portion of it returned to England in De- 

 cember. Governor Pownall's situation as comptroller- 

 general would not require that he should accompany the 

 army on its march, and his own return to England, b}' the 

 way of Paris, would no doubt better suit his convenience 

 than by any other route. That the burning of the 

 Jesuits' books of sound casuistry, alluded to in the letter 

 signed Bifrons, was the burning ordered by the arret of 

 the 6th of August, 1762, at whatever date that arret may 

 have been carried into execution, we believe cannot admit 

 of doul)t ; as it was the only burning of the kind within 

 a probable period — say, within half a century imme- 

 diately preceding the date of the letter, that was of suffi- 

 cient extent to warrant the use of the words " and a score 

 more," in addition to the specified works of Busembaum, 

 Suarez, and Molina. The only subsequent similar burning 

 of books at Paris, took place on the 21st of January, 1764, 

 in the court -yard of the palais ; but by what authority 

 does not appear. The collection of French arrets, down 

 to 1789, to which we have access, professes to be a com- 

 plete one ; yet the arret of the 6th of August, 1762, is the 

 last one, of that collection, that condemns atiy books to 

 the flames. The burning of the 21st of Januarj', 1764, 

 could not have been eft'ected under its authority ; be- 

 cause among the books burnt was the Instruction Pas- 

 torale of the Archbishop of Paris, Christophe de Beau- 

 mont, which was not published until the 28th of October, 

 1763 ; and yet, a modern French historian of the Jesuits 

 insinuates, that the Archbishop's book was burnt by an 

 arbitrary order of the parliament, — and adds, that the 

 Emile of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the Encyclopedic, 

 shared the same fate, at the hands of the same execu- 

 tioner."] 



SOUTHS SERMONS. 



I am not aware of any annotated edition of Dr. 

 South's admirable Sermons, and should be glad, 

 therefore, either to be informed if any exists 

 where the subjoined passages are explained, or to 

 receive some elucidation of the same through 

 " N. & Q. ? " 



1. " A coal, we know, snatched from the altar, once 

 fired the nest of the eagle, the royal and commanding 

 bird." 



What is the story here alluded to ? 



2. " Wolsey obtained leave from the Pope to demolish 

 forty religious houses, which he did by the service of five 



