178 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2"* S. IX. Mar. 10. '60. 



published by De la Haye at Paris, 1660, in 19 

 vols. fol. John Williams. 



Arno's Court. 



Slander. — The following case is thus reported 

 in Siderfin's Reports, vol. i. p. 327. : — 

 " Baker versus Morfue. 



" In accon sur le case Plaintiff declare q. etant Attor- 

 ney et le Defendant parlant de luy et de son profession 

 dit de luy, ' he hath no more Law than Mr. C.'s Bull.' Et 

 apres Verdict pur Plaintiff fuit move in arrest de Judg- 

 ment quia les parols de eux mesrnes ne sont actionable 

 et auxy si sont uncore ne serra icy quia n'ad declare q. C. 

 ad un Bull. Mes le Court semble q. Plaintiff avera Judg- 

 ment quia a dire, he hath no more Law than a Goose ad ee. 

 adjudge actionable. Et coment C. n'ad Bull unc. est 

 slander : quere del dizaut, he hath no more Law than the 

 man in the moon." 



The marginal note of the case is " Acton pur 

 parols He hath no more law than Mr. C.'s Bull 

 parle del Attorney actionable." 



This case was decided in Easter Term, 19 

 Charles II. [1667] in the King's Bench ; the judges 

 who decided it being Lord Chief Justice Sir John 

 Kelyng, Mr. Justice Twisden, Mr. Justice Wind- 

 ham, and Mr. Justice Morton. 



As this admixture of Norman, Latin, and Eng- 

 lish may not be quite intelligible to all your 

 readers, the following is a translation : — 



" Baker against Morfue. 



" In an action on the case, the Plaintiff declares that 

 being an Attorney, and that the Defendant, speaking of 

 him and of his profession, said of him ' He hath no more 

 law than Mr. C.'s Bull.' And after verdict for the 

 Plaintiff, it was moved in arrest of judgment because the 

 words of themselves were not actionable ; and also if the}' 

 are, still they will not be so here because he has not de- 

 clared that C. has a Bull ; but to the Court it seems that 

 the Plaintiff shall have judgment, because to say he has 

 no more law than a goose has been adjudged actionable, 

 and although C. has not a Bull, still it is slander : quere of 

 saying 'he hath no more law than the man in the 

 moon.'" 



F. A. Carrington. 



Ogboume St. George. 



Bishop Jeremy Taylor's Pulpit. — One of 



your correspondents, a short time since, men- 

 tioned the whereabouts of Archbishop Leighton's 

 pulpit. It may not be uninteresting to some of 

 your readers to know that the pulpit in which 

 Jeremy Taylor used to preach is now in the 

 library of the Bishop of Down and Connor, at the 

 palace, Holywood ; having been placed there by 

 his lordship's worthy predecessor, Bishop Mant. 



A. T. L. 

 A Roste Yerne. — 



" If the lettron in the Chapitor were skowred and set 

 in myddis of the hye where, and the roste yerne in the 

 same where set in the Chapitour we think should do 

 well."— York Fabric Rolls, 267. 



The learned editor queries whether the roste 

 yerne is " a clibanum for baking singing bread." 

 We cannot suppose that the baking utensils 



would be in the high choir and fit to change 

 places with the Lettron. It is doubtless a spread 

 eagle, a roused erne. " Rouse, to shake and 

 flutter — a term in ancient hawking." — Hulliwell. 

 Yerne := erne, the northern name for the common 

 eagle. 



" In heaven and yearthe be laud and praise.' — King 

 Henry VIII.'s Anthem. 



W. Gr. 



Robinson Crusoe Abridged. — Looking over 

 my old books belonging to this class of fiction, I 

 notice that Defoe, in the second volume of Robin- 

 son Crusoe, 8vo. London, Taylor, 1719, speaks in 

 unmeasured language of the damnge done him by 

 the abridgers; and concludes a summing up of 

 the loss the readers suffer by their depriving the 

 book of its just proportions, with this strong de- 

 nunciation upon the infractors of his rights : — 



" The Injury these Men do the Proprietor of this Work 

 is a Practice all honest Men abhor, and he believes he 

 may challenge them to shew the Difference between 

 that and Robbery on the Highway, or Breaking open a 

 House.". 



As it may not be generally known who the 

 offenders in this way were, I may here record 

 that the famous Thomas Gent stands self-con- 

 victed * of imitating the practice of Nat. Crouch, 

 alias R. Burton, and melting down Robinson 

 Crusoe into a twelve-penny book. 



Gent seems to have been put up to this bit of 

 piracy by his master, Edward Midwinter, and I 

 find the identical copy among my Chaps. The 

 title runs : — 



" The Wonderful Life and most surprising Adventures 

 of R.Crusoe of York, Mariner," &c. " Faithfully Epito- 

 mized from the three volumes, and adorned with Cutts 

 suited to the most remarkable stories." 12mo. E, Mid- 

 winter, N.D. 



Though not the first, this abridgment seems 

 to have been the favourite one. At all events it 

 is the same as another I have, printed at Glasgow 

 in 1762. • J. O. 



First Hackney Coaches. — In a letter from 

 G. Garrard to the Lord Deputy of Ireland (see 

 Strafford's Letters and Despatches, vol. i. p. 227.) 

 may be read the following extract : 



" I cannot omit to mention any new thing that comes 

 up amongst us, tho' never so trivial : Here is one Captain 

 Baily, he hath been a sea Captain, but now lives on the 

 land, about this city, where he tries experiments. He 

 hath erected, according to his ability, some four Hackney 

 Coaches, put his men in a livery, and appointed them to 

 stand at the May-Pole in the Strand, giving them in- 

 structions at what rates to carry men into several parts 

 of the Town, where, all day they may be had. Other 

 Hackney men seeing this way, they nocked to the same 

 place, and perform their journies at the same rate. So 

 that sometimes there is twenty of them together, which 

 disperse up and down, that they and others are to be had 

 everywhere as Watermen are to be had by the Water - 



* See Life of Thomas Gent, 8vo. London, 1832, p. 124. 



