| November 5. 1649. 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
[No. 2 
There was a Sir William Skipwyth, oa 
was appointed a. Judge of the Common Pleas 
in 83 Edward III., and Chief Baron of the 
| Exchequer in 36 Edward III.; and, were it 
_ not that Collins, in his Baronetage, followed 
| by Burke, says that he remained Chief Baron 
till 40 Edward III., ix which year he died, I 
should have had ne deubt that the Irish Chief 
Justice was the same with the English Chief 
Baron. 
The same authority adds that Sir William 
Skipwyth who was made a Justice of the 
King’s Bench [it should have been of the 
Common Pleas] in 50 Edward IIL, and who 
_ resigned his office in 11 Richard IL, was the 
eldest son of the Chief Baron. But that au- 
thority does not make the slightest allusion 
to the appointment of the Chief Justice of 
Ireland. 
A suspicion that this last Justice of the 
Common Pleas is not only the same person 
in my mind for the following among other 
reasons. 
1. Collins and Burke are wrong in saying 
that he remained Chief Baron till 40 Edward 
III. His successor in that office was appointed 
on October 29. 1365, 39 Edward IIT. 
2. They are further wrong, I imagine, in 
saying that he continued Chiet Baron till his 
death ; for Joshua Barnes, in his History of 
Edward III., p. 667., says that Skipwyth and 
Sir Henry Green, the Chief Justice of the 
King’s Bench, were in 1365 arrested and 
imprisoned on account of many enormities 
which the King understood they had com- 
mitted against law and justice; and this 
relation is corroborated by the fact that 
Green’s successor as Chief Justice was ap- 
pointed on the same day as Skipwyth’s suc- 
cessor as Chief Baron. 
3. No proof whatever is given of the Chief 
Baron’s death in 40 Edward III. 
I will not trouble you with other grounds 
ef identification which occur to me: but as 
an answer to my question might “‘ make these 
edds all even,” I send the “ Query” to the 
“Lost and Found Office” you have esta- 
blished, in the hope that some stray “ Note,” 
as yet ‘unappropriated, may assist in solving 
the difficulty. Epwarp Foss. 
“ THE THISTLE OF SCOTLAND. 
Mr. Editor, — May I ask if any of your 
contributors could inform me in an early 
number, when and on what occasion the 
Thistle was adopted as the emblem of the 
Scottish nation? I have leoked into many 
historians, but as yet found nothing definite 
enough. R. L. 
Paisley, Oct. 29. 1849. 
CAPTURE OF THE DUKE OF MONMOUTH. 
Mr. Editor, — Having noticed the letter of 
Mr. John Bruce, in your Miscellany, I beg 
leave to inform him that the ash tree under 
which Monmouth was taken is still standing 
on the Woodland estate, now the property of 
the Earl of Shaftesbury. 
I shall be happy at some future day, if it | 
suits your purpose, to collect and send you 
: , _such particulars as may be gained on the 
as the Chief Justice of Ireland, but also as | 
the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, has arisen | 
spot respecting it, and the incidents of the 
capture. 
We have still in the Town Hall here the 
chair in which it is said Jefferies sat at the 
Bloody Assize. A.D. M. 
Dorchester, 2d Nov. 1849. 
[We shall gladly receive the particulars which 
our Correspondent. proposes to collect and for- 
ward. ] 
SERPENTS EGGS AND STRAW NECKLACES. 
[Mr. Thoms’ Query in this case should have 
been limited to the straw necklaces, as Mr. Nichols 
has already explained the serpents’ eggs; but our 
Correspondent’s letter is so satisfactory on both 
points that we insert it entire. ] 
The passage from Erasmus, “brachium 
habet ova serpentum,” is plainly to be ren- 
dered “and with a string of serpents’ eggs 
on your arm.” The meaning is equally appa- 
rent on recalling the manner in which snakes’ 
eggs are found, viz., hanging together in a 
row. Erasmus intends Menedemus to utter 
a joke at the rosary of beads hanging over 
the pilgrim’s arm, which he professes to mis- 
take for serpents’ eggs. 
I am not aware what particular Rites © 
the “collar or chaplet” (for it may mean 
either) of s¢raw may have, as worn by a pil- 
erim from Compostella; or whether there 
may not lurk under this description, as be- 
a 
