May 19. 1855.J 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



583 



481. on the said bouses, due to him as rector of 

 St. Magnus, might nut be o\ erlooked. 



J. Waylen, 



The Office of Justice of the Peace held hy a 

 Lady. — in Harleian MSS., 980. fol. 153., is the 

 following curious entry : 



"The Countess of Richmond, mother to Henry VII., 

 was a justice of the peace. Mr. Atturney said if it was 

 so, it ought to have been by commission, for W^h he had 

 made many an hower search for the record, but could 

 never find "it ; but he had seen many arbitriments that 

 were made by her. Justice Joanes afermed that he had 

 often heard from his mother of the Lady Bartlet, mother 

 to the Lord Bartlet, that she was a justice of the peace, and 

 did set usually upon the bench with the other Justices in 

 Gloucestershire ; that she was made so by Q. Mary upon 

 her complaint to her of the injuries she sustained by some 

 of that county, and desiring for redresse thereof, that as 

 she herself was cheif justice of all England, so this lady 

 might be in her own count}', w=i> accordingly the queen 



granted. Another example was alledged of one 



Eowse in Suffolk, who usually at the assizes and sessions 

 there held set upon the bench among the justices jr/adio 

 c'lncta." 



Cl. Hopper. 



■ Harbingers of Spring. — Asa proof of the late- 

 ness of this season, compared with that of 1854, 

 I may mention a fact in natural history which I 

 think is worth a place in *' N. & Q.," that on this 

 day (April 19) last year, I gathered a branch of 

 whitethorn in full blossom ; and swallows were 

 seen here two days previously. The former is not 

 likely to be found this year for several weeks to 

 come, and the latter have not made their appear- 

 ance yet. 



The above is the earliest appearance of haw- 

 thorn blossoms, called " May," that I have ever 

 noticed ; but I must in justice state, that they 

 were not general for some days after. 



E. S. Tatloe. 



Ormesby, St. Margaret, Norfolk. 



Harnir. — In a critical notice of M. FiefFe's 

 History of Foreign Troops in the Service of France, 

 the AthenoEum of April 28 quotes as follows from 

 his account of the Scotch brigade : 



" In testimony of its old fidelity, it retained precedence 

 over other companies, and adopted (it should have been 

 retained) the custom of answering when challenged in 

 Scotch, by the word hhay hamier." 

 Which sounds very much Vike I am here, and is 

 translated by our learned author Me voild. I 

 have the same story in a French almanac, which 

 gives a succinct history of the army in 1820. But 

 the word is there given hamir, which is Scotch for 

 me voild, without the gibberish from whence 

 M. Fieffe says it is derived. Every one practised 

 in the Scotch dialect will recognise the exclama- 

 tion of " Aam here " In the so-called Scotch 

 word. M. (2) 



Jeremy Taylor at Cambridge. — " Whether he 

 received any emolument or honorary distinction 

 from Cambridge is doubtful." This statement 

 {Life by Heber, ed. Edin., 1854, p. xvi.) cannot 

 be repeated by any future biographer who may 

 see in the Gent. Mag., April, 1855, sufficient evi- 

 dence that Jeremy Taylor was a pauper scholaris 

 of Caius College for above a year and a half, and 

 subsequently received stipend as Perse scholar for 

 ten half-years, and as Fellow for five half-years, 

 and was thus member of the College for above 

 nine years. W. R. C. 



<SMtxiti. 



LANFRANC AND ODD. 



Sir Francis Palgrave says that In the reign'of 

 William the Conqueror a " folkmoot " (called by 

 Lingard a shiremote) was held on Pennenden 

 Heath, near Maidstone, where three days were 

 spent in discussing the adverse rights of Odo and 

 Lan franc to some lands stated to belong to the 

 archbishop. 



" The Norman earl and the Norman prelate contended 

 for the Anglo-Saxon franchises, according to the con- 

 struction of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. The Witen, the 

 English versed in the old usages and customs of their 

 country, were ordered to attend ; and the hoary Egilric, 

 Bishop of Chichester, was brought thither in a chariot 

 drawn by four horses, to record the jurisprudence of the 

 old time." — Palgrave, p. 254., quoted from Spicilegium 

 ad Eadmerum, p. 197. 



The work to which Sir Francis refers is written in 

 Latin. Is there any English work which describes 

 this memorable assembly ? Why does not Mr. 

 Bohn give us a translation of Eadmer, the friend 

 and historian of Bishop Anselm, whose history of 

 Enghind in his own time, from 1066 to 1122, is 

 said to contain many facts nowhere else to be 

 found ? 



Besides the general interest concerning this 

 national assembly, in which the haughty archbishop 

 bowed in homage to the old forms of Saxon 

 freedom, I want to know something of the long 

 ride which the aged Egilric submitted to, the 

 longest surely on record before the discovery of 

 coacli-s[)rings, and which must have shaken him 

 grievously if taken across the rough and hilly 

 wealds of Sussex and Kent. Geoffrey, Bishop of 

 Coutance, presided at the mote by order of William, 

 and it ended in the triumph of the archbishop, 

 who gained the possession of the lands. 



C. thanks F. for his observations on " devising 

 land " in your 288th Number, p. 354. Surely there 

 can be no "counterbalancing disadvantages to the 

 testamentary power " worthy of being weighed In 

 the scale against the benefits of being exempt 

 from the old shackles of feudalism ! C. (1) 



