488 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
[2hd §, No 95., June 21. 66. 
“ Letter from Dublin” (2°78. i, 447.) —I beg 
to suggest to the communicator of the interesting 
** Letter from Dublin,” June 12, 1689, that he has 
misread the initials, “Sir J— C——:” they should 
be, as I venture to aflirm, “Sir T— C——,’* 
as those of Sir Thomas Crosby of Ballyheigue 
Castle, co. Kerry, whose son, Walter Crosby, was 
one of the most active and devoted agents in the 
plots against the government of King William; 
until arrested in London several years afterwards. 
His name is often mentioned in the private cor- 
respondence and printed records of the period. 
And from private sources of information, I know 
that this young man was a protégee and emissary 
of Sir Patrick Trant, one of the leading instru- 
ments of King James’s Irish policy before the 
Revolution. 
There is, in the “ Letter from Dublin,” interiial 
corroboration of my surmise: for, in a further 
paragraph, it refers to the information given by 
“The Quakers and Crossby ;” but it would be 
satisfactory to be assured that the misleading 
initials “ J. C.” had been misread or misprinted, 
as I assume them to be. And any other informa- 
tion which could be given of the ultimate fate of 
this daring Jacobite would be reveived as a 
favour. A. B. RB. 
Belmont. 
2 : 
LA:STINGEAN, 
In his note upon this word; occurring Bede, 
lib. 11. ¢. xxili., Mr. Stevenson says, ‘ The present 
church (of Lastingham), if not the original build- 
ing of Cedda, is probably one of the earliest ec- 
clesiastical buildings in the kingdom.” Mr. Chur- 
ton adopts this opinion: “ Early English church,” 
p- 82. This is certainly a mistake. I have no 
doubt but that Cedd did build a church at Last- 
ingbam, although Bede merely says that he ob- 
tained land whereon to build a monastery, and 
did thereon build one. But this church would un- 
doubtedly be of wood. Cedd and his brothers 
were at this time (660) rigid disciples of the 
Scottish schoul of Lindisfarne; and there is no 
instance, I believe, of the Scottish monks having 
ever built otherwise than “more Scotico.” But 
apart from this, Bede himself, ten lines below the 
reference above indicated, mentions that, after the 
death of Cedd, and before the time he wroté, the 
monks of Lastinghain had built a church of stone: 
“Tempore autem procedente, in eodem monas- 
terio ecclesia est in honorem Beate Dei Geni- 
tricis de lapide facta.” Now, a mere glance is 
sufficient to show that the present church of Last- 
ingham is nota church of the age of Bede, and the 
local histories uniformly state that this second 
{* This error, as it seems probable it is, occurs in the 
original, where we distinctly read “Sir J—C——.”—Eb. ] 
church was destroyed by the Danes in the ninth 
century. The present church, which has under- 
gone great alteration, appears to me to have been 
originally a Norman church, and the date assigned 
to it is 1088. It is even a question whether there 
were not another church at Lastingham during 
the 200 years that elapsed between the de- 
struction of Bede’s church and the erection of the 
present church. I have not met with any record 
of one; but it appears from Young’s Whitby, that 
there were monks at Lastingham during this 
period, and if so, there would be a church there 
of some sort, I suppose. This ehurch would be 
destroyed in the worse than Danish ravages in- 
flicted upon Northumbria by the Conqueror in 
1069. 
At all events, I submit that, so far from being 
the first, the present church is not entitled to rank 
higher than the third of the Lastingham churches: 
The crypt of Lastingham may be more ancient 
than the church, and I should be glad to have the 
opinion of some of your ecclesiological contributors 
upon its probable date. D. 
HAUNTED HOUSES: PRIESTS’ HIDING=PLACES, ETC. 
If Mrs. Radcliffe, of romantic meniory; had 
deferred to the present time the publication of 
her interesting works, abounding with “ gloomy 
old castles and haunted abbeys,” “dreary pas- 
sages,” “trap-doors and winding stairs leading to 
athe and danger,” “fancied spectfes and 
rodrous hoises,” “ long=drawn, deep, and heavy 
Sighs,” “antique towers and vacant courts,” &c.,. 
a greater portion of the charmiig excitement 
hitherto produced on a perusal of them would 
now be realised: the statements so frequently 
made in “N. & Q.” as to priests’ hiding-places 
undermining the very ground-work on which the 
pleasing fictions were based, and substituting 
mournful historical facts of man’s tyranny towards 
his fellows, and those men — Christian ministers. 
Although it was not to be expected that every 
reader would absorb all that Madame wrote, yet 
many were not unwilling to receive her narra- 
tives as “the wild illusions of a creative mind, in 
forms that pleased and touchéd the heart.” 
In Captain Duthy’s Sketches of Hampshire*, a 
work full of interest, and worthy the attention of 
all antiquarian readers, the author notices some 
old family mansions as being the supposed scenes 
of ghostly terrors and supernatural visitations ; 
and also an ancient house called Woopcors, 
which, amongst its numerous rooms and secret 
recesses, comprised a “ priests’ hole :” 
“Tn that edifice,” he says, “ behind a stack of chimnies, 
and accessible only by removing the floor boards, was an 
* Longman & Co., and Nutt, London. 
es 
