506 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 86. 



and " sewell," are convertible terms. If there is 

 any word in that passage which could be con- 

 sidered coextensive in meaning with the word 

 " sewell," it would undoubtedly be " penna." Nor 

 is " sewell" a modern term, as he supposes ; in proof 

 of which I add an extract from a letter written by 

 Dr. Layton, one of the commissioners for the sup- 

 pression of monasteries, to Thomas Cromwell, 

 dated 1535, in which the word " sewel" occurs : 



" We have sett Dunce (Duns Scotus) in Bocardo, 

 and have utterly banissliede liym Oxforde for ever, with 

 all Ills blinde glosses, and is non'e made a comon servant 

 to evere man, faste nailede up u])on postes in all comon 

 houses of easement ; id quod oculis meis vidi. And the 

 second tyme we came to New Colege, afltcr we hade 

 declarede your injunctions, we fownde all the gret 

 quadrant court full of the leifFes of Dunce, the wynde 

 blowing them into evere corner. And there we fownde 

 one Mr. Grenefelde, a gentilman of Buckinghamshire, 

 gctheryng up part of the said bowke leiffes (as he saide) 

 therewith to make hym seweUes or hlawnsherres to kepe 

 the dere within the woode, thereby to have the better 

 cry with his howndes." 



H. C. K. wishes to know the origin of the word 

 "sewell." Can any of your readers explain the 

 derivation of the term "hlawnsherres?" Can it 

 be connected with the French hlancJte, from white 

 parchment, &c. having been used in making 

 them? E. A. H. L. 



Lambert Simnel (Vol. iii., p. 390.). — Tiiougli I 

 cannot throvv any light upon the question of T., 

 Was this his real name ? I may mention, as a 

 Worcestershire man, that it is a custom among the 

 pastrycooks of Worcester to make, at the begin- 

 ning of Lent, a rich sort of cake ; consisting of a 

 thick crust of saffron-bread filled with currants, 

 citron, and all the usual ingredients of wedding- 

 cake, which is called a " simnel." I cannot say 

 how long this custom has existed, but I have 

 every reason to believe it is one of great antiquity. 

 From Johnson's explanation of the term, I con- 

 clude, that this practice of making "simnels" 

 must in former times have been more general than 

 it is at present. £. A. H. L. 



Tennyson s '■'■In Mcmoriayn" (Vol. iii., pp. 142. 

 227. 458.). — I submit that the "crimson-circled 

 star" may be named without calling on the poet 

 to explain. 



The planet Venus, when she is to the east of 

 the sun, is our evening star (and as such used to 

 be termed Hesperus by the ancients). 



The evening star in a summer twilight is seen 

 surrounded with the glow of sunset, " crimson- 

 circled." The I'ose, too, was a flower sacred to 

 Venus, which might justify the epithet. But I 

 suppose the blush of the sky was what the poet 

 thought of at such a moment. 



Venus sinking into the sea, which in setting she 

 would appear to do, — falls into thcgrave of Uranus, 



— her father, according to the theory of Hesiod 

 (190). The part cast into the sea, from which 

 Aphrodite sprung, is here taken, by a becoming 

 license (which softens the grossness of the old 

 tradition), for the whole ; so that the ocean, be- 

 neath the horizon of which the evening star sinks, 

 may be well described by the poet as '■'■her father's 

 grave." 



That Venus is meant, the gender of the pronoun 

 relating to the star seems to prove beyond a 

 doubt ; there being no other sufKciently important 

 to occur in a picture of this kind, to which a fe- 

 male name is given. V. 



Belgravia, June 12. 1851. 



The second King of Nineveh who burned his 

 Palace (VoL iii., p. 408.). — D.X. will find all 

 that is known of this king in the Armenian version 

 ofEusebius's Chronicle, 53., and in the Chrono- 

 gi-aphia of Georgius, Syncellus (and subsequently 

 Patriarch) of Constantinople, p. 210. b. The 

 former gives as his authority Abydenus, and the 

 latter Polyhistor. Both passages will be found in 

 Cory's Ancient Fragments. The Median king is 

 called in both Astyages, and not Cyaxares; but the 

 date of the catastrophe being fixed by Ptolemy's 

 Canon in 625 b. c, the reviewer, I suppose, con- 

 sidered himself justified in altering the name to 

 that of tiie king who appears from Herodotus to 

 have governed Media at that date. E. H. D. D. 



Legend in Frettenham Church (Vol. iii., p. 407.). 

 — Your correspondent C. J. E. may find some 

 account of the legend illustrated on the walls of 

 Frettenham Church in the Calendar of the Anglo- 

 Catholic Church, from which it appears that St. 

 Eligius, Eloy, or Loye, is the hero of the incident. 

 He was the patron of blacksmiths, farriers, &c. ; 

 and accomplished, on one occasion, the shoeing of 

 a refractory horse by amputating the leg ; and the 

 operation performed, he replaced the severed 

 member. Doubtless, as C. J. E. suggests, the 

 shoeing might have been effected without so 

 much periphrasis ; but perhaps the saint intended 

 to teach the animal docility, and inspire the spec- 

 tators with a more palpable proof of his superna- 

 tural powers, than the performance of the opera- 

 tion by his mere ipse dixit would have afforded. 

 The church of Durweston, Dorsetshire, is named 

 in his honour, and a rude sculpture over the 

 doorway commemorates the incident. C. A. 



Natural Daughter of James II. (Vol. iii., pp. 224. 

 249.280,). — When the answer of C. to my inquiry 

 first appeared, I doubted whether after such 

 strong reproof I ought again to address you ; but 

 as your valuable paper was intended for the igno- 

 rant as well as for the learned, and as C. (Vol. iii., 

 p. 334.) places your respected correspondent Me. 

 Dawson Turner in the same class as my humble 

 self, I no longer hesitate. 



When I proposed the Query, I had no ready 



