410 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 8i 



copy of the title-page of an arithmetical work in 

 my possession which seems a curiosity in its way ; 

 but whether unique or not, my slender biblio- 

 graphical knowledge does not enable me to deter- 

 mine. It is as follows : 



"The Arte of Vulgar Arithmeticke, both in Integers 

 and Fractions, devided iido two Bookes, whereof the first 

 is called Nomodidactus JVumerorum, and the second 

 Partus Proportionum, with certeine Demonstrations, 

 reduced into so plaine and perfect Method, as the like 

 hath not hethcrto beene published in English. Wherevnto 

 is added a third Booke, cntituled Musa Mercatorum : 

 comprehending all the most necessarie and profitable 

 Rules vsed in the trade of Merchandise. In all which 

 three Bookes, the Rules, Precepts, and Maxims are 

 onehj composed in meeter for the better retaining of them 

 in memorie, but also the operations, examples, demon- 

 strations, and questions, are in most easie wise expounded 

 and explaned, in the forme of a dialogue, for the reader's 

 more cleere vnderstanding. j4 knowledge pleasant fur 

 Gentlemen, commendable for Capteines and Soldiers, pro- 

 fitable for Merchants, and generally necessarie for all 

 estates and degrees. Newly collected, digested, and in 

 some part deuised by a welwiller to the Matheniaticals." 



" EcclesiasticHs, cap. 19. 



" Learning unto fooles is as fetters on their feete 

 and nianicles vpon their right hand ; but to the wise it 

 is a lewell of golde, and like a Bracelet vpon bis right 

 arme. 



" Boetius. I. Arith. cap. 2. 



" Omnia quiecunque a prinnEua natura constrncta sunt, 

 Numcrorum videnlur racione formato. Hoc enim fuit 

 principale in animo conditoris exemplar. Imprinted at 

 London by Gabriel Simson, dwelling in Fleete Lane, 

 1600." 



The volume (which is a small quarto of 270 

 folios) is dedicated " To the Right Honorable sir 

 Thomas Sackuill, Knight, Baron of Buckhurst, 

 Lord Treasurer of England," &c. &c., by Thomas 

 Hylles. 



Perhaps one or other of your correspondents 

 will kindly inform me whether this volume is a 

 rarity, and also oblige me with some information 

 regarding Thomas Hylles, its author. 



Sn. Davie, Jun. 



[Professor De Morgan, in his " Arithmrtical Books 

 from the Invention of Printing to the present Time," 

 describes Hylles' work " as a big book, heavy with 

 mercantile lore ;" and the author as being, " in spite 

 of all his trifling, a man of learning." A list of the 

 author's other works will be found in Watt's Bibliotheca 

 Brilannica, and Lowndes's Bibliographer s Manud of 

 English Literature, under the word Hills (Tliomas). 

 See also Ames's Typographical Antiquities.'^ 



iUpltcS. 



VILLENAGE. 



(Vol. iii., p. 327.) 



Your correspondent H. C. wishes to know whe- 

 ther bondage was a reality in tlie time of Philip 



and Mary; and, if so, when it became extinct. It 

 was a reality much later than that, as several cases 

 in the books will show. Dyer, who was appointed 

 chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas in 

 1559, settled several in which man claimed pro- 

 perty in his fellow-man, hearing arguments and 

 giving judgment on the point whether one should 

 be a " villein regardant" or a " villein in gross." 

 Lord Campbell, in his Lives of the Chief Justices, 

 gives the following, tried before Dyer, C. J. : 



" A. B., seised in fee of a manor to which a villein 

 was regardant, made a feoffment of one acre of the 

 manor by these words : ' I have given one acre, &c., 

 and further I have given and granted, &c., John S., 

 my villein.' Question, ' Does the villein pass to the 

 grantee as a villein in gross, or as a villein appendant 

 to that acre ? ' The Court being equally divided in 

 opinion, no judgment seems to have been given." — 

 Dyer, 48 b. pi. 2. 



Another action was brought before him under 

 these circumstances: — Butler, Lord of the Manor 

 of Badminton, in the county of Gloucester, con- 

 tending that Crouch was his villein regardant, 

 entered into certain lands, which Crouch had 

 purchased in Somersetshire, and leased them to 

 Fleyer. Crouch thereupon disseised Fleyer, who 

 brought his action against Crouch, pleading that 

 Butler and his ancestors were seised of Crouch 

 and his ancestors as of villeins regardant, from 

 time whereof the memory of man runneth not to 

 the contrary. The jury found that Butler and 

 his ancestors were seised of Crouch and his ances- 

 tors until the first year of the reign of Henry VIL ; 

 but, confessing themselves ignorant whether in 

 point of l;;w such seisin be an actual seisin of the 

 defendant, prayed the opinion of the Court 

 thereon. Dyer, C. J., and the other judges 

 agreed upon this to a verdict for the defendant, 

 for " the lord having let an hundred years pass 

 without redeeming the villein or his issue, cannot, 

 after that, daiiu them." (Dyer, 266. pi. 11.) 



When Holt was chief justice of the King's 

 Bench, an action was tried before him to recover 

 the price of a slave who had been sold in Virginia. 

 The verdict went for the plaintiff. In deciding 

 upon a motion made in arrest of judgment, Holt, 

 C. J., said, — "As soon as a negro comes into 

 England he is free : one may be a villein in Eng- 

 land, but not a slave." (Cases temp. Holt, 405.) 



As to the period at which villenage in England 

 became extinct, we find in Litt. (sec. 185.) : — 



" Villenage is supposed to have finally disappeared 

 in the reign of James I., but there is great difficulty 

 in saying when it ceased to be lawful, for there has 

 been no statute to abolish it ; and by the old law, if 

 any freeman acknowledged himself in a court of record 

 to be a villein, he and all his after-born issue and their 

 descendants were villeins." 



Even so late as the middle of the eighteenth 

 century, when the great Lord Mansfield adorned 



