502 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 186. 



ferred to ? whether or not it does exist ? and, if 

 so, where ? C D. 



Minax €L\ietitS iutt^ <Bniiaeti, 



" A Letter to a Convocation Man " (Vol. vii., 

 pp.358. 415.),— I beg to thank " N". & Q." for 

 the answer to my inquiry respecting the author- 

 ship of this letter. I should be very glad to 

 learn further particulars respecting Sir Bartho- 

 lomew Shower. Was he a member of the House 

 of Commons, as the author of the Letter intimates 

 that he himself was ? I shall also be very thank- 

 ful if Tyro, or any other correspondent, will 

 answer for me these Queries, suggested by the 

 same Letter. 



" It was the opinion, indeed, of a late great preacher, 

 that Christians under a Mahometan or Pagan govern- 

 ment, ought to value the peace of the country above 

 the conversion of the people there." 

 Who is the preacher here referred to ? 



Who were the authors, and what were the titles, 

 of the many Defences of Sherlock's Vindication of 

 the Holy and Ever Blessed Trinity, and The Di- 

 vinity and Death of Christ f * 



And what farther is to be learned of Mr. Papin, 

 a Socinian, who joined the Church of Rome about 

 that period ? f 



Who was Chief Justice in 1697 ? Was it Chief 

 Justice Treby ? | 



Trelawney, Bishop of Exeter, excommunicated 

 Dr. Bury. When was the living the latter en- 

 joyed " untouched and even unquestioned by 

 another bishop ? " § 



In case the answers to these should not appear 

 of sufficient importance to be put into type, I en- 

 close an envelope. W. Fbaser. 



Tor-Mohun. 



P.S. — The misprint you point out. Vol. vii., 

 p. 409., of Oxoniensis for Exoniensis, occurred in 

 the Appendix to Wake's State of the Church and 

 Clergy of England, p. 4. 



[* The titles of nearly twenty works relating to 

 Sherlock's Trinitarian Controversy will be found s. v. 

 in the Bodleian Catalogue, vol. ill. p. 462. See also 

 Watt's Bihliotheca Britannica. 



■{• A long account of Mr. Papin is given in Rose's, 

 as well as in Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary. 



I Sir George Treby was Chief Justice of Connmon 

 Pleas in 1697. 



§ Bishop Trelawney, it appears, suspended Dr. 

 Arthur Bury from the rectorship of Exeter College 

 for some heterodox notions in his work, The Naked 

 Gospel. The affair w^as carried by appeal from the 

 King's Bench to the House of Lords, when Bishop 

 Stillingfleet delivered a speech on the " Case of Visit- 

 ation of Colleges," printed in his Ecclesiastical Cases, 

 part ii. p. 411. Wood states that Dr. Bury was soon 

 after restored. For an account of this controversy, and 

 the works relating to it, see Gough's British Topo- 



graphy, vol. ii. p. 147., and Wood's AthencB (Bliss), 

 vol. iv. p. 483. 



Any farther communications on the above Queries 

 shall be forwarded to our correspondent.] 



Prester John. — I should be glad, through the 

 medium of " N. & Q.," to be favoured with some 

 information relative to this mysterious personage. 



Strath Clyi>e. 



[The history of Prester John, or of the individuals 

 bearing that appellation, appears involved in considerable 

 confusion and obscurity. Most of our Encyclopa'dias 

 contain notices of this mysterious personage, especially 

 Rees's, and Collier's Great Historical Dictionary. " The 

 fame of Prester or Presbyter John," says Gibbon, " a 

 khan, whose power was vainly magnified by the Nes- 

 torian missionaries, and wlio is said to have received 

 at their hands the rite of baptism, and even of or- 

 dination, has long amused the credulity of Europe. 

 In its long progress to Mosul, Jerusalem, Rome, &c., 

 the story of Prester John evaporated into a monstrous 

 fable, of which some features have been borrowed from 

 the Lama of Thibet (^Hist. Genealogique des Tartares, 

 part ii. p. 42.; Hist, de Gengiscan, p. 31. &c. ), and 

 were ignorantly transferred by the Portuguese to the 

 emperor of Abyssinia (Ludolph, Hist. JEtiiiop. Com- 

 ment. 1. ii. c. 1.). Yet it is probable that, in the twelfth 

 and thirteenth centuries, Nestorian Christianity was 

 professed in the horde of the Keraites."] 



Homer s Iliad in a Nut. — On the tomb of those 

 celebrated gardeners, Tradescant father and son, 

 these lines occur in the course of the inscription : 



" Whilst they (as Homer's Iliad in a nut), 

 A World of Wonders in one closet shut." 



Will you explain the comparison implied in the 

 words " as Homer's Iliad in a nut ?" David. 



[It refers to the account given by Pliny, vii. 21., that 

 the Iliad was copied in so small a hand, that the whole 

 work could lie in a walnut-shell : " In nuce inclusam 

 Iliada Homeri carmen, in membrana scriptum tradidit 

 Cicero." Pliny's authority is Cicero apud GelUum, 

 ix. 421. See M. Huet's account of a similar experi- 

 ment in Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xxxix. p. 347.] 



Monogram of Parker Society. — What Is the 

 meaning of the monogram adopted by the Parker 

 Society on all their publications ? Tyro. 



[The monogram is "Matthew Parker," Archbishop 

 of Canterbury in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.] 



The Five Alls. — Can any of your readers give 

 me an interpretation of a sign on an inn in Oxford, 

 which bears this inscription ? 



"THE FIVE ALLS." 

 I can make nothing of it. Curiosus. 



Oxford. 



[Captain Grose shall interpret this Query. He says, 

 " The Five Alls is a country sign, representing five 

 human figures, each having a motto. The first is a 

 king in his regalia, • I govern all.' The second, a 



