106 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 144. 



apple, may possibly have been received into the Latin 

 tongue from the like cause." — Nicholson and Burn's 

 Westmoreland, quoted in Southey's Commonplace Hook, 

 vol. ii. 



This appears an uncommonly original view of the 

 apple ; I trust Mr. Littledale will endeavour to 

 swallow and digest it ! A. A. D, 



NUMEROUS FAMULIES. 



(Vol. v., pp. 357. 548. &c.) 



In the Gentleman's Magazine for December, 

 1837, is a letter from Dr. Bathurst, Bishop of 

 Norwich, in which he says : 



" My father was the youngest brother of the first 

 Lord Bathurst : he had thirty-six children, of whom I 

 was the twenty-fifth." 



C. DE D. 



I latterly made a Note of the following para- 

 graph : 



" At the back of the cellar of Lincoln Cathedral 

 lies the body of Michael Honeywood, one of 367 

 persons, whom Mary, wife of the late Robert 

 Honeywood of Kent, ancestor of the late M. P. for the 

 county, lived to see lawfully descended from her, viz. : 

 16 of her own body, 114 grandchildren, 228 great- 

 grandchildren. In all, 367 persons; 313 of whom 

 followed her to the grave." 



Can any of your correspondents supply any 

 information respecting this statement, for, singu- 

 lai-ly enough, a similar case is mentioned in a late 

 Paris paper (Siecle of May 11. 1852), wherein the 

 numbers mentioned are exactly the same as those 

 above alluded to ; indeed, they are more correct, 

 for, "according to Cocker," the three numbers 16, 

 114, and 228 do not make up the total of 367 ; it 

 requires the nine great-great-grandchildren to 

 complete it. The French paragraph runs thus : 



" L'extrait suivant d'une epitaphe que Ton pent lire 



dans le cimetiere de C constate un fait assez rare 



pour devenir I'objet d'un souvenir particulier : 



" Ci-glt Dame, &c. 

 (Suivent les noras & qualites.) 



Elle avait a sa mort, 



Trois cent soixante-sept enfans, 



Provenant de son legitime mariage 



Avec Monsieur X , &c. 



Elle etait mere de - 16 enfans. 

 Grandmere de - - 114 „ 

 Bisaieule de - - 228 „ 

 Trisaieule de - - 9 „ 



Lignee egale - 367 enfans." 



Unfortunately, the names of the place and of 

 the persons themselves are not here given. 



Philip S. King. 



SURNAMES. 



(Vol. v., passim.') 



Many observations have been made about sur- 

 names in " N. & Q." lately, but I have not seen 

 any doubt expressed as to which of a man's names 

 the word applies to. Contrary, however, to the 

 use of the word which prevails elsewhere, I find 

 Bishop Nicholson, in his Exposition of the Cate- 

 chism, takes it to be the same as the Christian 

 name. He says (p. 8., Angl. Cath. edit.) : — 



" Every Christian bearing two names ; the one of 

 nature, which is the name of his house, family, or kin- 

 dred, and this he brings into the world with him ; the 

 other of grace, of favour, being his sirname, that is over 

 and above added unto him." 



On this the editor has a note, in which he quotes 

 Skinner as saying, 



" Surname, q.d. supernomen, i.e. nomen addititium, 

 scilicet respectu nominis baptismo inditi." 



But this agrees with common usage ; so also, in 

 the folio Johnson's Dictionary, "surname" is de- 

 fined to be — 



" The name of the family ; the name which one has 

 over and above the Christian name." 



I shall be obliged to any of your correspondents 

 who will explain Nicholson's peculiar use of the 

 word. F. A. 



Evei'y one is aware of the whimsical causes of 

 many surnames. They frequently were due to 

 some striking circumstance in the lives of the 

 first bearers of them, but still much more often 

 to personal or habitual peculiarities ; and this was 

 at no period so coumion as between the age of 

 Charlemagne and the Crusades. In the history of 

 France we find, " Charlemagne avait donne 

 I'Aquitaine, avec le titre de roi, a son fils Louis, 

 sous la tutelle de Guillaume au Court Nez, due de 

 Voulcuse." Now, who knows but that the great 

 French family of the Courtenays, the Greek em- 

 perors of that name, and the illustrious Courtenays 

 of Devonshire, may owe their name to this defi- 

 ciency of nose in William of Toulouse ? Though 

 he does not pretend to get at the root. Gibbon 

 only traces the family to 1020, when it was esta- 

 blished at Courtenay : but the sobriquet was given 

 about 790, and might have conferred a name upon 

 the castle William inhabited, and from that the 

 country round it. Shobtnose. 



ON A PASSAGE IN "THE MERCHANT OF VENICE," 

 ACT HI. SO. 2. 



(Vol. v., p. 605.) 



There are two points in Mr. Singer's remarks 

 on the above-named passage that call for some 

 notice, and to which, with your permission, I 

 will briefly refer. First, I should like to ask him 

 if, on consideration, he thinks that "gilded shore" 



