Sept. 3. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



223 



S. Z. Z. S. justly observes that there are two 

 points to be distinguished : first, Cranmei-'s wish 

 that Calvin should assist in a general union of the 

 churches protesting against Romish errors; se- 

 cond, Calvin's offer to assist in settling the Church 

 of England. He adds, " The latter was declined ; 

 and the reason is demonstrated in Archbishop 

 Laurence's Bampton Lectures." I neither possess 

 those lectures, nor the volume of Calvin's epistles ; 

 but all I have seen of the correspondence between 

 him and Cranmer, in the Parker Society's editions 

 of Cranmer, and of original letters between 1537- 

 58, and in Jenkyns' Remains of Cramner, indis- 

 poses me to believe that Calvin made any " offer 

 to assist in settling the Church of England." It 

 appears from Dean Jenkyns' note, vol. i. p. 346., 

 that Archbishop Laurence made a mistake in the 

 order of the correspondence, calculated to mislead 

 himself; and as to lieylyn's assertion, Eccles, 

 Restaur., p. 65., that Calvin made such an offer, 

 and " that the Archbishop (Cranmer) knew the 

 man and refused his offer," the Dean says : 



" He gives no authority for the latter part of his 

 statement, and it can hardly be reconciled with Cran- 

 mer's letter to Calvin of March 20, 1 552." 



The contemptuous expression, he " knew the man 

 and refused his offer," is, in fact, utterly irrecon- 

 cilable with Cranmer's language in all his three 

 letters to Melancthon, to BuUinger, and to Calvin 

 (Nos. 296, 297, 298. of Parker Society's edition of 

 Cranmer's Remains, and Nos. 283, 284, 285. of 

 Jenkyns' edition), where he tells each of the other 

 two that he had written to Calvin from his de- 

 sire — 



" Ut in Anglia, aut alibi, doctissimorum et opti- 

 morum virorum synodus convocaretur, in qua de puritate 

 ecclesiastics doctriiiae, et pracipue de consensu con- 

 troversiae sacramentariae tractaretur." 



Or, as he said to Calvin himself: 



" Ut docti et pii viri, qui alios antecellunt eruditione 

 et judicio, convenirent. " 



Your correspondent seems to have used the 

 word " demonstrated " rather in a surgical than in 

 its mathematical sense. 



Having taken up my pen to supply you with an 

 answer to this historical inquii-y, I may as well 

 notice some other articles in your No. 199. For 

 example, in p. 167., L. need not have referred your 

 readers to HaUiwell's Researches in Archaic Lan- 

 guage for an explanation of Bacon's word " bul- 

 laces." The word may be seen in Johnson's 

 Dictionary, with the citation from Bacon, and in- 

 stead of vagnely calling it "a small black and 

 tartish plum," your botanical readers know it as 

 the Prunus insititia. 



Af^^i^i^ p_)7.'^.. J. M. may like to know farther, 

 that theDuke of Wellington's clerical brother was 

 entered on the boards of St. John's College, Cam- 



bridge, as Wesley, where the spelling must have 

 been dictated either by liimself, or by the person 

 authorised to desire his admission. It continued 

 to be spelt Wesley in the Cambridge annual ca- 

 lendars as late as 1808, but was altered in that of 

 1809 to Wellesley. The alteration was probably 

 made by the desire of the family, and without 

 communicating such desire to the registrary of the 

 university. For it appears in the edition of 

 Graduati Cantahrigienses, printed in 1823, as 

 follows : 



" Wesley, Gerard Valerian, Coll. Joh. A. M. 1 792. 

 Comitis de Mornington, Fil. nat. 4'>'«." S^Ji-Jj - 2.^' 



In p. 173., C. M. Inglebt may like to know, as 

 a clue to the origin of his apttssee and, that I was 

 taught at school, sixty years ago, to call & And 

 per se, whilst some would call it And-per-se-and. 



In the same page, the inquirer B. H. C. re- 

 specting the word mammon, may like to know that 

 the history of that word has been given at some 

 length in p. 1. to p. 68. of the Parker Society's 

 edition of Tyndale's Parable of the wicked Mam- 

 mon, where I have stated that it occurs in a form 

 identical with the English in the Chaldee Targum 

 of Onkelos on Exod. xviii. 21., and in that of 

 Jonathan on Judges, v. 9., as equivalent to riches ; 

 and that in the Syriac translation it occurs in a 

 form identical with Ma^uwx'a, in Exod. xxi. 30., as 

 a rendering for 133, the price of satisfaction. 

 In B. H. C.'s citation from Barnes, even seems a 

 misprint for ever. The Jews did not again fall 

 into actual idolatry after the Babylonish captivity ; 

 but we are told that in the sight of God covetous- 

 ness is idolatry. Hbnby Walter. 



Hasilbury Bryan. 



BAKNACIiES. 



(Vol. viii., p. 124.) 



A Querist quoting from Porta's Natural Magic 

 the vulgar error that " not only in Scotland, but 

 in the river Thames, there is a kind of shell-fish 

 which get out of their shells and grow to be ducks, 

 or such like birds," asks, what could give rise to 

 such an absurd belief ? Your correspondent 

 quotes from the English translation of the Magia 

 Naturalis, A. d. 1658; but the tradition is very 

 ancient. Porta the author having died in 1515 a.i>. 

 You will find an allusion in Hudihras to those — 



"Who from the most refin'd of saints, 

 As naturally grow miscreants, 

 As barnacles turn Solar.d geese. 

 In th' islands of the Orcades." 



The story has its origin in the peculiar formation 

 of the little mollusc which inhabits the multivalve 

 shell, the Pentalasmis anatifera, which by a fleshy 

 peduncle attaches itself by one end to the bottoms 

 of ships or floating timber, whilst from the other 



